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

This full-page sketch depicts the ‘Corn Market’ at Abbeville in Picardy, northern France. Turner visited Abbeville on 10 and 13 September 1824. At centre, rising above the gabled rooftops, is the profile of St Vulfran’s Collegiate Church. Finberg writes that this sketch, and Tate D19935; Turner Bequest CCXVI 192a, is related to Turner’s illustration of Abbeville for Scott’s Prose Works, published between 1834 and 1836 (see Tate impression T04763).1 That design was used as the title-vignette to volume twenty-eight (‘Tales of a Grandfather’) of the publication.

For other drawings of Abbeville, including Turner’s studies of the Saint-Vulfran Church in this sketchbook, see Tate D18582, D19929–D19933, D19943, D19945–D19948, D20116–D20117; Turner Bequest CCXI 37a, CCXVI 189a–191a, 196a, 197a–199, CCXVII 22–23.