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

Turner filled much of this page with several slight sketches, including figures in fashionable dress. In the upper left-hand quadrant can be made out two bust-length studies of a pair of coiffured women. The urn-like object just to the left of the lower group suggests that these drawings were made in the palace gardens at Saint-Cloud, some seven miles west of central Paris and the subject of extensive study in this sketchbook. On special Sundays each September, large numbers of visitors massed at this location for an annual fair, during which time the interior of the chateau was opened up and the garden fountains turned on.1 Certainly, crowds of holiday-makers feature prominently in one of the Saint-Cloud watercolours which Turner worked up with a view to engraved reproduction around this time; see especially Tate D24697 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 132).