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 Steamboat (or 'Remorqueur') Towing Boats near Villequier ?1829

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Steamboat (or 'Remorqueur') Towing Boats near Villequier’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 57 Recto:
A Steamboat (or ‘Remorqueur’) Towing Boats near Villequier ?1829
D23810
Turner Bequest CCLIII 57
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘57’ bottom left descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIII – 57’ bottom left descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains a simple sketch, drawn horizontally, of a steamboat and two sailboats on the water with high hilly riverbanks beyond. Finberg identified this sketch as ‘Banks of Seine’1 and the location has been further specified as Villequier,2 a town on the River Seine. Art historian Ian Warrell states3 that this drawing lies behind Turner’s later watercolour and gouache study, A Steamer and Shallow Waters in the Seine, Normandy, c.1832 (Tate D24646; Turner Bequest CCLIX 81), and formed the preliminary sketch4 for another watercolour of about the same date, Between Quillebeuf and Villequier (Tate D24669; Turner Bequest CCLIX 104).5 The latter was engraved for Turner’s Annual Tour – Wanderings by the Seine, 1834 (Tate impressions: T05609, T06241).
As Warrell notes,6 Turner’s published Annual Tour series features steamboats in a number of works, yet Turner’s sketchbooks contain surprisingly few portrayals of these machines, indicating that he did not make them an area of special study when he encountered them during his travels in France. Such steamboats could act as tugs to tow sailboats. In a few lines and shading, Turner contrasts light and graceful sailing boats with a squat and powerful steamboat.
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.770.
2
?Ian Warrell, ‘Turner on the Seine: Topographical Index’, c.1999, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain (printout in copy of Warrell 1999), pp.5, 6.
3
Warrell 1999, p.150 no.88, p.271 no.88.
4
Ibid., p.274 no.125.
5
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.414 no.968, reproduced.
6
Ibid., p.78.
Technical notes:
There is brownish discolouration on this page, the edge of the staining apparent on the left, from damage likely caused by the 1928 Tate Gallery flood (see the technical notes to the sketchbook’s Introduction). There is a small hole in the paper towards the centre of the page.

Caroline South
May 2017

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘A Steamboat (or ‘Remorqueur’) Towing Boats near Villequier ?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-steamboat-or-remorqueur-towing-boats-near-villequier-r1195716, accessed 30 January 2025.