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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern France 1832 > Seine and Paris Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Coastal Terrain near Le Havre, Normandy 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Coastal Terrain near Le Havre, Normandy’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 84 Verso:
Coastal Terrain near Le Havre, Normandy 1832
D24048
Turner Bequest CCLIV 84a
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with small seaside views. Art historian Ian Warrell has identified this and neighbouring sketches in the volume as depictions of the coastal hinterlands around Le Havre where the Seine debouches into the English Channel. Special attention has been paid to the particular curve of the coast, and to the way in which the jagged skyline of human settlement punctuates the horizon between sea and sky. As Warrell has noted, ‘La Lueur’ (French for ‘glimmer’) is inscribed at the bottom of the page, suggesting Turner’s intention to fix in his memory a particular effect of light on water. A list of pages in the sketchbook featuring Le Havre and Cap de la Hève is provided in the entry for folio 48 recto (D23975; Turner Bequest CCLIV 48).1

John Chu
July 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.50.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Coastal Terrain near Le Havre, Normandy 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-coastal-terrain-near-le-havre-normandy-r1173453, accessed 20 April 2024.