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 View from above Sainte-Adresse ?1829

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View from above Sainte-Adresse’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Recto:
View from above Sainte-Adresse ?1829
D23724
Turner Bequest CCLIII 14
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Fey]’ left of centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘14’ top right ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIII – 14’ top right ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains a sketch, drawn horizontally, of a landscape. Finberg noted it simply as ‘River in distance’,1 but the location of Le Havre has been confirmed.2 Buildings trail down the hillside in mid-ground and foreground, and in the distance, a sweep of the Seine estuary meets the sea. Turner roughly records the shapes of buildings such as that of the church tower in the foreground and tower at upper left. Trees are indicated simply, for example by the jagged line at bottom left. A lighthouse is noted with a simple mark at top right. There appears to be text at centre left reading ‘Fey’ but it is not clearly decipherable.
Art historian Ian Warrell refers3 to this sketch, as well as folios 12 verso and 13 recto (D23722–D23723), and drawings in the 1832 Seine and Paris and Guernsey sketchbooks (Tate D24050–D24052, D24054–D24061; Turner Bequest CCLIV 85a–86a; D23597, D23603; CCLII 41, 45), being the result of Turner climbing to the headland above Sainte-Adresse, the Côte d’Ingouville,4 which is in the environs of Le Havre.

Caroline South
May 2017

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.768.
2
Warrell 1999, pp.109, 259 note 30, p.269 cats.66 and 67; ?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, pp.109, 259 note 30, p.269 cats.66 and 67.
4
Ibid., pp.109 (referring to ‘Ste-Andresse’), 259 note 30.

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘View from above Sainte-Adresse ?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-view-from-above-sainte-adresse-r1195630, accessed 25 April 2024.