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 Church of Saint-Gervais and Saint-Protais, Gisors; The Cross at Neaufles-Saint-Martin, Normandy 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Church of Saint-Gervais and Saint-Protais, Gisors; The Cross at Neaufles-Saint-Martin, Normandy’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 43 Verso:
Church of Saint-Gervais and Saint-Protais, Gisors; The Cross at Neaufles-Saint-Martin, Normandy 1832
D23966
Turner Bequest CCLIV 43a
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the drawing at the top of this page depicts the large Gothic and Renaissance church of Saint-Gervais and Saint-Protais at Gisors, located some twenty-five miles east of the Seine as it flows past Les Andelys. Depicted from a southerly vantage, the sixteenth-century tower can be seen rising above the nave to the right.
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner also included a view taken in the terrain west of Gisors on the bottom half of this page. In the foreground can be seen the twelfth-century stone cross at Neaufles-Saint-Martin (a lucky talisman in local folklore) and beyond that, the remnants of the Tour de la Reine Blanche.1
Gisors and its ancient architecture were the subject of particular study in this sketchbook. For a list of associated sketches in the volume, see the entry for folio 41 verso (D23962; Turner Bequest CCLIV 41a). For a slightly later watercolour study of the town’s landmarks in the Turner Bequest, see Tate D20265 (Turner Bequest CCXXII F).

John Chu
July 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.52.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Church of Saint-Gervais and Saint-Protais, Gisors; The Cross at Neaufles-Saint-Martin, Normandy 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-church-of-saint-gervais-and-saint-protais-gisors-the-cross-r1173371, accessed 26 April 2024.