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 33 Recto:
Street Scene with the Church of Notre-Dame, Lillebonne ?1829
D23762
Turner Bequest CCLIII 33
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘S’ towards top left, ‘[?A...]’ top centre, cross or ‘[?2]’ top right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘33’ top right ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIII – 33’ top right ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains a sketch, drawn horizontally, of a town scene, with a church to the left. The view is similar to that on folio 32 verso opposite (D23761), but Turner has moved closer into the scene and conveys it in greater detail. Finberg noted this page simply as a ‘Street, with Church’,1 but the location was later suggested2 and identified3 as Lillebonne. The shape and details of the church tower correspond with those of the sixteenth-century4 Church of Notre-Dame. The large-roofed building to the left of the church corresponds with the one Turner depicts on folios 31 verso and 32 verso (D23759, D23761) in views of this town square.
Turner includes additional sketches in the top left corner and top right of the page. The subject of the sketch at top left is indiscernible, whilst the sketch at top right records details of the church tower. Turner also includes annotations at top – there is a letter ‘S’ to the left of the church tower which could indicate Turner’s view is southwards; the text to the right of the church tower appears to be a word beginning ‘A[...]’; and there appears to be a cross or numeral ‘2’ marked in the top right corner of the page.

Caroline South
May 2017

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.769.
2
Wilkinson 1975, p.65 reproduced as ‘Lillebonne?’.
3
?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.
4
‘Parish Church of Notre-Dame, French Heritage monument to Lillebonne’, www.en.patrimoine-de-france.com, accessed 2 March 2017, http://en.patrimoine-de-france.com/seine-maritime/lillebonne/eglise-paroissiale-notre-dame-10.php.

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-r1195668, accessed 18 April 2024.