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 Old Bridge at Poissy, with Houses on It ?1829

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Old Bridge at Poissy, with Houses on It’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 90 Verso:
The Old Bridge at Poissy, with Houses on It ?1829
D23877
Turner Bequest CCLIII 90a
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 multi-arched and buttressed bridge over a river, with buildings on the bridge. Finberg noted it simply as ‘Bridge, with houses on it’,1 but the location has been confirmed as Poissy.2 (For further information on the town, see under folio 86 recto; D23868.) The structure corresponds to the old bridge, which had buildings, including mills, upon it. Ruined portions of the bridge remain in the present day, after it was destroyed in the Second World War.3
As well as the shapes of the bridge and buildings, Turner conveys river banks leading down to the water, vegetation and, with a few vertical lines at lower centre, reflections in the water.

Caroline South
May 2017

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.771.
2
Warrell 1999, pp.210, 262 note 178; ?Ian Warrell, ‘Turner on the Seine: Topographical Index’, c.1999, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain (printout in copy of Warrell 1999), p.4.
3
‘Le Pont Ancien et les Berges de Seine’, www.ville-poissy.fr, accessed 27 April 2017, http://www.ville-poissy.fr/index.php/cadre-de-vie/decouvrir-poissy/sites-et-monuments/le-pont-ancien-et-les-berges-de-seine.html.

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘The Old Bridge at Poissy, with Houses on It ?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-old-bridge-at-poissy-with-houses-on-it-r1195783, accessed 27 April 2024.