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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with studies of Château Gaillard and the associated villages of Les Andelys, Normandy. The top half of the page is taken up with a wide view north across the settlement as seen from the Seine with a small boat and riverside infrastructure to the left. Towards the top right-hand corner of the page are described the ruins of the castle’s twelfth-century fortifications perched on their steep eminence. In the centre, some one hundred metres below, can be seen the needle-like spire of the Church of Saint-Sauveur at Petit Andely. At the bottom is another, slighter description of the fortress’s shattered outer bailey

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.