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 The Banks of the River Seine ?1829

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Banks of the River Seine’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 58 Recto:
The Banks of the River Seine ?1829
D23812
Turner Bequest CCLIII 58
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘58’ top right ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIII – 58’ top right ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains a sketch, drawn horizontally, of high rocky riverbanks over water. Finberg noted it as ‘Banks of river’,1 and the location has been identified as a general view of the Seine between Le Havre and Rouen.2 Folio 57 verso opposite (D23811) shows Villequier and the verso (D23813) La Mailleraye-sur-Seine, which could indicate the sketch is of a location between these two towns, made as Turner travelled eastwards along the river.
The high ground with vegetation coming down to the water at left and town on the water at right would correspond to La Mailleraye-sur-Seine itself but the buildings at right and structures at left are too indistinct for confirmation. The lines at the top of the sketch appear to be a continuation of the right side of the panorama below.

Caroline South
May 2017

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 Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999), p.5.

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘The Banks of the River Seine ?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-the-banks-of-the-river-seine-r1195718, accessed 25 April 2024.