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

Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the small drawing at the top of this page depicts the scalloped encircling wall of the keep at Château Gaillard, Normandy. The arched eastern portal of this twelfth-century ruin is clearly discernable. The denser passages running across the centre of the page and along its lower edge appear to show the same edifice as viewed from amidst the nearby buildings of Les Andelys, located some one hundred metres below the fortress at the bottom of a steep hill. Another cursory rendition of the same scenery runs down the right-hand edge at right angles to the other drawings and continues over onto folio 45 verso opposite (D23970; Turner Bequest CCLIV 45a).

Of all the Seine valley sights, the landscape around 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 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.