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 Tancarville Castle ?1829

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Tancarville Castle’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 47 Verso:
Tancarville Castle ?1829
D23791
Turner Bequest CCLIII 47a
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 a castle on a rocky hilltop. Finberg identified this sketch as ‘Tancarville Castle’,1 and this location has been confirmed.2 Turner picks out details of the castle buildings such as the pointed roofs of the towers, and the crenellated top of the structure on the right known as the Coquesart tower. (For further information on the castle see under folio 46 recto; D23788.)
Art historian Ian Warrell states3 that this drawing (and 0folio 46 verso; D23789) was used as a preliminary sketch for Turner’s later watercolour, Tancarville from the East (‘Front View’), c.1832 (Tate D24693; Turner Bequest CCLIX 128),4 which was engraved for Turner’s Annual Tour – Wanderings by the Seine, 1834 (Tate impression: T05597, T06226).
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.770.
2
?Ian Warrell, ‘Turner on the Seine: Topographical Index’, c.1999, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain (printout in copy of Warrell 1999), p.5.
3
Warrell 1999, p.273 no.120.
4
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.412 no.956, reproduced.
Technical notes:
There are faint thumbprints at top right of the page.

Caroline South
May 2017

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘Tancarville Castle ?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-tancarville-castle-r1195697, accessed 27 April 2024.