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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 18 Verso:
Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832
D23916
Turner Bequest CCLIV 18a
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Famille Boucherand | Rous[...] ?Moraville’ towards bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with studies of the hillside Père-Lachaise Cemetery some two miles east of central Paris. 1 Special attention has been paid on the left-hand side of the page to the neoclassical tombs typical of this relatively recent foundation. The owners of these mausoleums are noted by Turner in a semi-decipherable hand at the bottom of the page. The many studies of Père-Lachaise in this sketchbook culminated in an engraved illustration for a new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–36); see Tate impression T04744.
A list of pages in the sketchbook featuring Père-Lachaise is provided in the entry for folio 24 verso (D23928; Turner Bequest 24a).

John Chu
July 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.243.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 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-pere-lachaise-cemetery-paris-r1173321, accessed 26 April 2024.