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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner worked onto this page a view of the seventeenth-century Porte Saint-Denis, located amidst the Parisian right-bank boulevards. The Porte-Saint-Martin can also be made out in the background. Art historian Ian Warrell has identified this drawing as a source for a slightly later colour study of this location (Tate D24571; Turner Bequest CCLIX 6).1 The existence of these depictions suggests that Turner considered the subject as an illustration for Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France)2 although the Porte Saint-Denis did not make it into this publication in the event.