J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Second Italian Tour 1828-9 > Lyons to Marseilles Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Old Port at Marseille; a Study of the ?Town Hall 1828

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Old Port at Marseille; a Study of the ?Town Hall’ 1828
Folio 64 Recto:
The Old Port at Marseille; a Study of the ?Town Hall 1828
D21114
Turner Bequest CCXXX 63
Pencil on cream lined wove paper, 145 x 111 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[?old port]’ above centre
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘63’ bottom left, upside down, and ‘4’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXX 63’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The three studies on this page were executed with the sketchbook turned upside down. Looking south from the Quai du Port, Turner used the upper section to depict moored boats in the foreground and the distant hilltop fortifications of Fort Notre-Dame. The sketch below offers a similar view, encompassing quayside buildings to the right.
At the bottom of the page is a disjointed study of a grand building with pilasters and triangular pediments. The geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has tentatively identified it as the ornate Baroque façade of the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Ville, on the north side of the old port.1
For a general commentary on Turner’s visit to Marseille and a list of comparable works in the sketchbook, see under folio 53 recto (D21092; Turner Bequest CCXXX 52).

Hannah Kaspar
March 2024

1
Roland Courtot, ‘6. Le carnet du voyage de Turner de Lyon à Marseille (CCXXX)(3)’, Carnets de voyage de Turner, accessed 29 January 2024, https://carnetswt.hypotheses.org/528.

How to cite

Hannah Kaspar, ‘The Old Port at Marseille; a Study of the ?Town Hall 1828’, catalogue entry, March 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2025, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/the-old-port-at-marseille-a-study-of-the-town-hall-r1209774, accessed 06 May 2025.