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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Soldiers Drinking in a Café, ? Nantes c.1826-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Soldiers Drinking in a Café, ? Nantes c.1826–8
D40080
Turner Bequest CCLIX 263b
Watercolour, gouache and ink on blue paper, 140 x 190 mm
Inscribed in ink ‘Caffé [?Premier] [?É]tage’ centre right
Blind stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX – 263b’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The headdresses of the women in this scene of soldiers drinking in a café locate the scene to Northern France. It is rendered on a heavy blue paper and with a palette of colours identical to a series of depictions of Nantes which Turner worked up in watercolour and gouache after his 1826 visit to the city, apparently in a single painting session.1
1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Loire, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, p.238.
Technical Notes:
The sheet belongs to a batch of heavy blue paper with red fibres used by Turner made by George Steart of Bally, Ellen and Steart at De Montault Mill, Coombe Down, Bath.1
1
Ibid. p.238.
Verso:
Inscribed in pencil with the note ‘CCLIX – 263(b)’ in bottom centre of the sheet. Stamped in black with the Turner Bequest monogram and with ‘CCLIX – 263 b’ in the centre of the sheet.

John Chu
March 2016

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Soldiers Drinking in a Café, ? Nantes c.1826–8 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2016, 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-soldiers-drinking-in-a-cafe--nantes-r1185625, accessed 26 April 2024.