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 St-Florent-le-Vieil; Varades, Loire Valley 1826

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘St-Florent-le-Vieil; Varades, Loire Valley’ 1826
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 19 Recto:
St-Florent-le-Vieil; Varades, Loire Valley 1826
D23186
Turner Bequest CCXLVIII 19
Pencil on white laid paper, 170 x 110 mm
Partial unidentified watermark
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘C Varad’ centre
Inscribed in pencil ‘19’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXLVIII 19’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner filled much of this page with studies of the Benedictine abbey of St-Florent-le-Vieil on its hilltop overlooking the Loire. 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);1 see Tate impression T06209. There are several pages of studies of this location in this volume. A list of these is provided in the sketchbook introduction. The vista second from the bottom has been identified as the settlement of Varades on the opposite bank of Loire from St-Florent-le-Vieil with its imposing Château de la Madeleine.2 Turner later made a colour study on blue paper of this subject; see Tate D24656 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 91).

John Chu
April 2015

1
Luke Herrmann, Turner Prints: The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 1990, pp.171–83.
2
Warrell, London 1997, p. 234.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘St-Florent-le-Vieil; Varades, 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-st-florent-le-vieil-varades-loire-valley-r1185018, accessed 24 April 2024.