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 Street Scene at Candes St-Martin; Cave Dwelling, Loire Valley 1826

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Street Scene at Candes St-Martin; Cave Dwelling, Loire Valley’ 1826
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Verso:
Street Scene at Candes St-Martin; Cave Dwelling, Loire Valley 1826
D23239
Turner Bequest CCXLVIII 45a
Pencil on white laid paper, 170 x 110 mm
Partial unidentified watermark
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘S[...]ze’ centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘4’ top right, ‘355’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the drawings on this page depict various scenes around the Loire Valley. The view with church spires in the upper half of the page has been identified as a street scene in the riverside settlement of Candes-St-Martin and suggested that it served as the basis for an illustration in Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France);1 see Tate impression T04790. Immediately below, on the right-hand side of the page, is a sketch of one the cave dwellings which are a particular feature of the countryside around the city of Saumur. Several pages in this volume feature these distinctive habitations; a list of these drawings is included in the sketchbook introduction. Turner subsequently worked up a colour study of one of these Saumurois caves on blue paper; see Tate D23240 (Turner Bequest CCXLVIII 46).

John Chu
April 2015

1
Luke Herrmann, Turner Prints: The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 1990, pp. 164–6, 171–83.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Street Scene at Candes St-Martin; Cave Dwelling, 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-street-scene-at-candes-st-martin-cave-dwelling-loire-valley-r1185071, accessed 19 April 2024.