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 Houses on a Quayside, Le Havre ?1829

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Houses on a Quayside, Le Havre’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Verso:
Houses on a Quayside, Le Havre ?1829
D23745
Turner Bequest CCLIII 24a
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Hotel des Indes]’ towards bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains a sketch, drawn horizontally, of buildings on a quayside. Finberg noted it as ‘Houses on quay’,1 but the location has been identified further as Le Havre.2 Turner provides sufficient detail of the rounded and studded shape of the tower at the left of the building at centre of the sketch for the structure to be identifiable as the Tower of François I. (For further information on the tower, see under folio 7 verso; D23712.)
Furthermore, as art historian Ian Warrell mentions,3 there is text at the bottom right of the sketch which is indistinct but could read ‘Hotel des Indes’, the name of a hotel in Le Havre,4 possibly where Turner took accommodation.

Caroline South
May 2017

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.769.
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, pp.38, 97, 254 note 130, 259 note 11.
4
A.M. de St. Amand, Lettres d’un Voyageur, a L’Embouchure de la Seine, Paris 1828, p.47, www.gallica.bnf.fr, accessed 28 February 2017, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k352230/f54.item.r=hotel%20des%20indes%20.

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘Houses on a Quayside, 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-houses-on-a-quayside-le-havre-r1195651, accessed 20 April 2024.