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 > Rouen, Le Havre, Caen, Bayeux and Isigny ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bayeux; Le Havre; Isigny-sur-Mer, Normandy 1826

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bayeux; Le Havre; Isigny-sur-Mer, Normandy’ 1826
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Recto:
Bayeux; Le Havre; Isigny-sur-Mer, Normandy 1826
D23521
Turner Bequest CCLI 33
Pencil on white wove paper, 83 x 122 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘?Jacques’ towards top right, ‘w[...] Horse’ bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘33’ top left, ascending vertically, ‘199’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLI 33’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner filled this page with sketches taken at different sites in Normandy. The large gothic building at the centre of the page is Bayeux Cathedral, recognisable by the cathedral’s twin steeples. In his 1909 Inventory of the Turner Bequest, A.J. Finberg identified the town of Isigny-sur-Mer amongst these drawings, presumably referring to the small depiction of an ecclesiastical structure in the top right-hand corner of the page which resembles the Church of Saint-George in that location.1 Tate curator Ian Warrell located the coastal terrain sketched into the top left-hand corner to the vicinity of Le Havre.2

John Chu
July 2015

1
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.763.
2
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Loire, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.30, 207 note 12.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Bayeux; Le Havre; Isigny-sur-Mer, Normandy 1826 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-bayeux-le-havreisigny-sur-mer-normandy-r1185364, accessed 25 April 2024.