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 Lillebonne Castle and the Church of Notre-Dame, Lillebonne ?1829

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lillebonne Castle and the Church of Notre-Dame, Lillebonne’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Verso:
Lillebonne Castle and the Church of Notre-Dame, Lillebonne ?1829
D23755
Turner Bequest CCLIII 29a
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains a sketch, drawn horizontally, of Lillebonne castle at centre and the tower of the Church of Notre-Dame, Lillebonne, at right. Finberg noted it simply as ‘Ruined castle on hill’,1 but the location has been confirmed as Lillebonne.2(For information on Lillebonne castle see under folio 29 recto, D23754; and for the church, under folio 28 recto; D23752.) The shapes of the buildings correspond to those of the castle and church and, although the scene is depicted from a different angle, they also correspond to Turner’s later watercolour sketch, The Castle at Lillebonne, Normandy, c.1832 (Tate D24807; Turner Bequest CCLIX 242).
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 Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999), p.3.
Technical notes:
There is faint brownish discolouration on this page, from damage likely caused by the 1928 Tate Gallery flood (see the technical notes to the sketchbook’s Introduction), the edge of the staining apparent on the left.

Caroline South
May 2017

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘Lillebonne Castle and the Church of Notre-Dame, Lillebonne ?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-lillebonne-castle-and-the-church-of-notre-dame-lillebonne-r1195661, accessed 24 April 2024.