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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with studies of the monumental architecture and stone bridges of Paris. The domed riverside building on the right-hand edge of the page may represent the Institut de France on the city’s left bank. Turner made several sketches of the Parisian riverside in the present volume, a list of which is provided in the sketchbook Introduction. For the watercolours of the city’s quaysides which Turner worked up with a view to engraved reproduction around this time, see Tate D24683–D24685 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 118–20). These culminated in several engravings 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 impressions T05621–T05623.