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 > Roman and French Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Distant View of L'Arbresle 1828

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant View of L'Arbresle’ 1828
Folio 14 Recto:
Distant View of L’Arbresle 1828
D21877
Turner Bequest CCXXXVII 14
Pencil on white wove paper, 88 x 71 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘14’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVII – 14’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest assigned this work the generic title ‘Castle among mountains’.1 Recently, the geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has identified this distant view, drawn with the page turned vertically, as L’Arbresle, a French town west of Lyon.2 Further views of L’Arbresle appear on folios 15 verso–16 verso (D21880–D21882). As proposed by Courtot, Turner likely encountered this location in the summer of 1828, during the outward leg of his journey.3

Hannah Kaspar
December 2024

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.726.
2
Roland Courtot, ‘17. Un carnet de notes de Turner pendant le voyage de 1828–1829’, Carnets de voyage de Turner, accessed 27 November 2024, https://carnetswt.hypotheses.org/4440.
3
Ibid.

How to cite

Hannah Kaspar, ‘Distant View of L’Arbresle 1828’, catalogue entry, December 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/distant-view-of-larbresle-r1210435, accessed 17 April 2025.