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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled the top half of this page with a wide view north towards Château Gaillard and the villages of Les Andelys from the Seine. 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. To the left, some one hundred metres below, can be seen the needle-like spire of the Church of Saint-Sauveur at Petit Andely, 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 their frequent recurrence in its pages, see folios 44 recto to 47 verso (D23967–D23974; Turner Bequest 44–47a), 49 verso to 52 verso (D23978–D23984; Turner Bequest 49a–52a), 54 verso to 57 recto (D23988–D23993; Turner Bequest 54a–57), 58 recto (D23995; Turner Bequest CCLIV 58).

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.