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 Rouen and the River Seine ?1829

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Rouen and the River Seine’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 73 Verso:
Rouen and the River Seine ?1829
D23843
Turner Bequest CCLIII 73a
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 view of the city of Rouen. Finberg identified this sketch as ‘View of Rouen’,1 and the location has been confirmed.2 The shore sweeps down into the foreground from the distance on the left. In the background, Turner depicts a multi-arched bridge (for further information on Rouen’s bridges see under folio 72 verso; D23841) spanning the river at right, and behind this and at left, high hills.
In the midground, on the left, he includes a boat on the water which art historian Ian Warrell describes as one of ‘shallow punts with gondola-like, enclosed seating areas, which seem to have been a feature of the river’.3
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.771.
2
Warrell 1999, pp.80, 258 note 90; ?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, pp.80, 258 note 90.
Technical notes:
There is brownish discolouration on this page, the edge of the staining apparent on the upper right, from damage likely caused by the 1928 Tate Gallery flood (see the technical notes to the sketchbook’s Introduction).

Caroline South
May 2017

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘Rouen and 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-rouen-and-the-river-seine-r1195749, accessed 13 May 2024.