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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Northern France c.1826-32 > Nantes, Angers and Saumur Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ancenis; St-Florent-le-Vieil; Château de Juigné, Loire Valley 1826

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ancenis; St-Florent-le-Vieil; Château de Juigné, Loire Valley’ 1826
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 16 Recto:
Ancenis; St-Florent-le-Vieil; Château de Juigné, Loire Valley 1826
D23181
Turner Bequest CCXLVIII 16
Pencil on white laid paper, 170 x 110 mm
Partial unidentified watermark
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘16’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXLVIII 16’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner filled this page with studies of the riverside terrain of the Loire valley. These scenes have been traced to a surprisingly disparate range of locations.1 Intermixed in the top half of the page are depictions of the settlement of Ancenis and the château at Juigné, located some thirty five miles apart. At the bottom of the page, inverted in relation to the sketches above, is featured the Benedictine abbey of St-Florent-le-Vieil on its hilltop overlooking the Loire. This is situated about eight miles upstream from Ancenis. In subsequent years the artist returned to his sketches of St-Florent-le-Vieil with a view to finding material for engraved reproduction. This resulted in a print in Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France);2 see Tate impression T06209. There are several pages of studies of each of these subjects in this volume. A list of these is provided in the sketchbook introduction.

John Chu
April 2015

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Loire, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, p.234.
2
Luke Herrmann, Turner Prints: The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 1990, pp.171–83.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Ancenis; St-Florent-le-Vieil; Château de Juigné, Loire Valley 1826 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-ancenis-st-florent-le-vieil-chateau-de-juigne-loire-valley-r1185013, accessed 20 April 2024.