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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with a view of the medieval town of Provins, located some fifty miles south-east of Paris. Studies of the twelfth-century Tour César and the Church of Saint-Quiriace have been included in the top right-hand corner. Most of the pages in this volume are taken up with sketches working towards illustrations for Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France) and a new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–36) although Provins featured in nether publication in the event. A list of pages in the present sketchbook featuring Provins is provided in the sketchbook Introduction.