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 A Bridge on the River Seine near Rouen ?1829

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Bridge on the River Seine near Rouen’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 72 Verso:
A Bridge on the River Seine near Rouen ?1829
D23841
Turner Bequest CCLIII 72a
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 stretch of river with a multi-arched bridge at centre in the mid-ground. Finberg identified this sketch as a ‘Bridge near Rouen’,1 and the location has been confirmed.2 In this tranquil scene, Turner includes buildings at left and right on the river’s edges, high hills in the background, a boat on the right shore and another on the water. He conveys the river in the foreground stretching off to the left. The particular bridge depicted no longer exists, as Rouen’s bridges were destroyed during the Second World War and subsequently replaced.3
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.771.
2
?Ian Warrell, ‘Turner on the Seine: Topographical Index’, c.1999, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain (printout in copy of Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999), p.5.
3
Jacques Tanguy, ‘La deuxième guerre mondiale’, www.rouenhistoire.com, accessed 20 April 2017, http://www.rouen-histoire.com/Ponts/Guerre.htm.
Technical notes:
There are several sweeping stains at the centre of the sketch.

Caroline South
May 2017

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘A Bridge on the River Seine near Rouen ?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-a-bridge-on-the-river-seine-near-rouen-r1195747, accessed 24 January 2025.