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 Street Scene with the Church of Notre-Dame, Lillebonne ?1829

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Street Scene with the Church of Notre-Dame, Lillebonne’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Recto:
Street Scene with the Church of Notre-Dame, Lillebonne ?1829
D23758
Turner Bequest CCLIII 31
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 156 x 107 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘31’ top left upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCLIII – 31’ top left upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains a sketch, drawn with the page turned upside down, of a town scene with a church at centre and buildings below. Finberg noted it simply as a ‘Street, with church’,1 but the location has been further identified as Lillebonne.2 In this sketch, Turner concentrates on the shape and decorative details of the church tower. These elements correspond to those of the sixteenth-century3 Church of Notre-Dame. (For further information on the church, see under folio 28 recto; D23752.) The area below the church may be a town square and the rounded shapes at lower right, indications of a carriage in the square.
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.769.
2
Guillaud and others, Turner en France, 1981, fig.656, p.325; ?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.
3
‘Parish Church of Notre-Dame, French Heritage monument to Lillebonne’, en.patrimoine-de-france.com, accessed 2 March 2017, http://en.patrimoine-de-france.com/seine-maritime/lillebonne/eglise-paroissiale-notre-dame-10.php.
Technical notes:
There is 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 top of the page.
 

Caroline South
May 2017

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘Street Scene with 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-street-scene-with-the-church-of-notre-dame-lillebonne-r1195664, accessed 27 April 2024.