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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Château Gaillard, Normandy 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 44 Verso:
Château Gaillard, Normandy 1832
D23968
Turner Bequest CCLIV 44a
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Four livres’ bottom centre, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much this page with cursory descriptions of the ruins of Château Gaillard, perched on its steep eminence some one hundred metres above the Seine. The top half of the page accommodates a sketch of the twelfth-century castle keep complete with its scalloped encircling wall. Inverted in relation to this passage, a drawing of one of the outer bailey’s round towers is featured directly below.
Of all the Seine valley sights, Château Gaillard and the local villages of Les Andelys were the subject of particular study in this sketchbook. For a list of associated sketches in the volume, see the entry for folio 51 verso (D23982; Turner Bequest CCLIV 51a). For the watercolours of this landmark in the Turner Bequest that the artist worked up with a view to engraved reproduction, see Tate D24678 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 113) and D24692 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 127). These culminated in two engravings in the 1835 volume of Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France); see Tate impressions T04708 and T04709.

John Chu
July 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Château Gaillard, 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-chateau-gaillard-normandy-r1173373, accessed 26 April 2024.