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 Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Recto:
Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832
D23931
Turner Bequest CCLIV 26
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘26’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIV – 26’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with studies taken at the hillside Père-Lachaise Cemetery some two miles east of central Paris.1 To the left-hand side of the page are featured the neoclassical tombs typical of this relatively recent foundation (1804), while a panoramic vista of the city stretches off the right. The dome of Les Invalides or the Panthéon can be made out towards the centre of the scene. 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 (1834–6); 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, pp.54, 243–6

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-r1173336, accessed 25 April 2024.