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 in the Distance, with the River Seine ?1829

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Rouen in the Distance, with the River Seine’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 74 Verso:
Rouen in the Distance, with the River Seine ?1829
D23845
Turner Bequest CCLIII 74a
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 ship on a river, with buildings on the water’s edge to the right. Finberg identified it as ‘Rouen in distance’,1 and the subject has been confirmed.2 The sketch is rough, yet Turner conveys the sweep of the shore of the River Seine from the foreground to the right, the shapes of the ship’s sails and rigging, and the shapes of the city’s buildings at right.
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.771.
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.
Technical notes:
There is brownish discolouration on this page, the edge of the staining apparent on the lower left, 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 in the Distance, with 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-in-the-distance-with-the-river-seine-r1195751, accessed 20 April 2024.