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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Château Gaillard, Normandy; Riverside Hills 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 47 Verso:
Château Gaillard, Normandy; Riverside Hills 1832
D23974
Turner Bequest CCLIV 47a
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Le Cau’ towards top left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the small sketches on this page describe the ruins of Château Gaillard and riverside scenery, presumably taken nearby. The centre of the page features a study of the twelfth-century castle ruins with the Normandy landscape unfolding some one hundred metres below. Cursorily sketched at the bottom edge of the page is a series of angular forms, perhaps intended to describe some crenulated detail of the fortress, or a broken wall punctuated by windows. At the top of the page is included a row of steep, overlapping hills typical of the Normandy terrain adjacent to the Seine.
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.

John Chu
July 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Château Gaillard, Normandy; Riverside Hills 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-riverside-hills-r1173379, accessed 19 September 2024.