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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled the top 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. The foreground is too cursory for the identification of an immediate location for these sketches although 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). Inverted in relation to this sketch, the drawings on the bottom half of the page depicts a hilly riverside landscape typical of the Normandy banks of the Seine which were the subject of particular study in this volume.