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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with a wide northerly view of the Seine from the high hills around Château Gaillard, Normandy. The right-hand side of the page is dominated by the ruins of the twelfth-century castle while, some one hundred metres below, the associated villages of Les Andelys stretch out along the banks of the river. The position of the needle-like spire of the Church of Saint-Sauveur at Petit Andely is recorded just to the left of the castle, and beyond this, the domed eighteenth-century edifice of the Saint-Jacques Hospital.

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.