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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Melun, Île-de-France 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 76 Verso:
Melun, Île-de-France 1832
D24316
Turner Bequest CCLVII 76a
Pencil on white laid paper, 175 x 127 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled the upper right quadrant of page with a view of the riverside town of Melun, located some twenty-eight miles south-east of central Paris on the banks of the Seine. A second cursory sketch of waterside hills runs down the left-hand edge of the page. Turner made several sketches of Melun in the present volume, a list of which is provided in the sketchbook Introduction. For the watercolour of the town which Turner worked up with a view to engraved reproduction around this time, see Tate D24690 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 125). This led to an illustration 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 impression T04725.

John Chu
January 2015

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Melun, Île-de-France 1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2015, 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-melun-le-de-france-r1175344, accessed 29 March 2024.