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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern France 1832 > Seine and Paris Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Paris ?from Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Paris ?from Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Recto:
Paris ?from Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France 1832
D23907
Turner Bequest CCLIV 14
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘14’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIV – 14’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with a panoramic view across Paris from a high vantage. The two west towers of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the dome of Les Invalides or the Panthéon are just visible at the centre of the scene. Although the foreground is too cursorily drawn for the identification of an immediate location, the neighbouring pages contain drawings of similar landscapes taken around Saint-Cloud some seven miles west of central Paris. 1 For comparisons, see examples of the watercolours of the riverside scenery around Saint-Cloud which Turner worked up with a view to engraved reproduction around this time; Tate D24688 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 123), D24689 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 124), and D24697 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 132).

John Chu
July 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.55, 223–8.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Paris ?from Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France 1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-paris-from-saint-cloud-le-de-france-r1173312, accessed 26 April 2024.