J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Turner worked a pencil sketch onto this sheet of blue paper to depict a southerly view across the village of Petit Andelys, Normandy. While the hilltop ruins of the castle’s twelfth-century fortifications loom in the background, the needle-like spire of the Church of Saint-Sauveur rises above the main settlement some one hundred metres below. Sketches of this landmark on the banks of the Seine recur frequently in the Seine and Paris sketchbook; for a list of these drawings, see the entry for Tate D23982 (Turner Bequest CCLIV 51a). For the finished watercolours of the castle in the Turner Bequest which the artist worked up with a view to engraved reproduction, see Tate D24678 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 113) and D24692 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 127). All this activity culminated in two engravings in the 1835 volume of Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France; see Tate impressions T04708 and T04709.

Verso:

The bottom of the centre edge of the sheet is inscribed in pencil with the note ‘D25005’.