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 View from above Sainte-Adresse ?1829

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View from above Sainte-Adresse’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Verso:
View from above Sainte-Adresse ?1829
D23722
Turner Bequest CCLIII 12a
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 buildings on a hillside. Turner deftly conveys with a few strokes, the different planes of the sweep of rocky foreground, buildings perched on the rock in the midground trailing down to the church nestled at the bottom, and sea and cliffs in the distant background. Finberg suggested ‘Graville (?)’1 as the location; however, Le Havre has been confirmed.2
Art historian Ian Warrell refers3 to this sketch, as well as two following pages (folios 13 recto and 14 recto; D23723–D23724), and drawings in the 1832 Seine and Paris and Guernsey sketchbooks (Tate D24050–D24052, D24054–D24061; Turner Bequest CCLIV 85a–86a; D23597, D23603; CCLII 41, 45), being the result of Turner climbing to the headland above Sainte-Adresse, the Côte d’Ingouville,4 in the environs of Le Havre.
Whilst the buildings depicted share Graville Abbey’s hillside situation, no distinctive features of the abbey buildings are conveyed, and there does not seem to be a Gothic church, as shown lower right at such a location in relation to abbey, hence this view if more likely to be of Sainte-Adresse than of Graville.
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.768.
2
Warrell 1999, pp.109, 259 note 30; ?Ian Warrell, ‘Turner on the Seine: Topographical Index’, c.1999, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain (printout in copy of Warrell 1999), p.3.
3
Warrell 1999, pp.109, 259 note 30.
4
Ibid., pp.109 (referring to ‘Ste-Andresse’), 259 note 30.
Technical notes:
There are two small dark spots, apparently of ink, on the upper left edge of the page, and a similar dash on the edge of the right corner.

Caroline South
May 2017

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘View from above Sainte-Adresse ?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-view-from-above-sainte-adresse-r1195628, accessed 20 May 2024.