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 > Guernsey Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Quillebeuf, Normandy ?1832

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Quillebeuf, Normandy’ ?1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Recto:
Quillebeuf, Normandy ?1832
D23568
Turner Bequest CCLII 26
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Partial watermark ‘YMAN | 28’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘26’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLII – 26’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner sketched three landscape views across the entire length of this page, the bottom two of which are inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated. The top sketch depicts the harbour of Quillebeuf in the wide embouchure of the Seine over which rises the Romanesque tower of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Port.1 The bottom sketch appears to record a view of the same settlement from a greater distance. For examples of the watercolour studies of Quillebeuf worked up by Turner around this time, see Tate D24576 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 11), D24668 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 103), and D24729 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 164). These culminated in the exhibition of a major oil piece on the subject, The Mouth of the Seine, Quille-Boeuf (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon) at the Royal Academy in 1833,2 and also in an engraving in the 1834 volume of Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France); see Tate impression T05598.

John Chu
April 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.36.
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.184–5, no.353, pl.332.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Quillebeuf, Normandy ?1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-quillebeuf-normandy-r1175060, accessed 25 April 2024.