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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Normandy ?1829 > Tancarville and Lillebonne Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Quayside Landscapes, Le Havre ?1829

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Quayside Landscapes, Le Havre’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 8 Verso:
Quayside Landscapes, Le Havre ?1829
D23714
Turner Bequest CCLIII 8a
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains two sketches, drawn horizontally, of buildings and a bastion along the coast, with higher ground indicated in the background. Finberg recorded these sketches as ‘Houses on quay, &c.’;1 however, the location of Le Havre has been confirmed.2 Art historian Ian Warrell mentions3 that this page and folio 9 recto opposite (D23715) relate to Turner’s later watercolour The Porte Royale at Le Havre, Normandy, c.1832 (Tate D24746; Turner Bequest CCLIX 181).
Turner records the shapes of buildings, including a tower right of centre in the upper sketch, and also seems to loosely indicate the masts and rigging of a ship on the far left of the bottom sketch. The lower sketch in addition depicts buildings nested atop the higher ground at centre right. The lower sketch may be a continuation of the upper panorama.

Caroline South
May 2017

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.768.
2
?Ian Warrell, ‘Turner on the Seine: Topographical Index’, c.1999, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain (printout in copy of Warrell 1999), p.3.
3
Warrell 1999, p.269 no.65.

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘Quayside Landscapes, Le Havre ?1829 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-quayside-landscapes-le-havre-r1195620, accessed 25 April 2024.