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 Town Walls of Poissy ?1829

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Town Walls of Poissy’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 94 Recto:
The Town Walls of Poissy ?1829
D23884
Turner Bequest CCLIII 94
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘94’ top right ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIII – 94’ top right ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains a simple sketch, drawn horizontally, of walls leading down to a rounded tower at centre. Finberg noted it as ‘City walls’,1 but the location has been confirmed as the town of Poissy.2 (For further information on the town, see under folio 86 recto; D23868.) The walls depicted would correspond to the town’s former fortifications.3

Caroline South
May 2017

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.771.
2
Warrell, Seine, 1999, pp.210, 262 note 178;and ?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
‘Histoire’, www.ville-poissy.fr, accessed 9 May 2017, http://www.ville-poissy.fr/index.php/cadre-de-vie/decouvrir-poissy/histoire.html.

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘The Town Walls of Poissy ?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-town-walls-of-poissy-r1195790, accessed 19 September 2024.