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

Turner filled much of this page with views of the seventeenth-century Château de Claremont, located on the River Loire some thirteen miles upstream of Nantes. Inverted in relation to the sketches above, the bottom of the page features the elaborate garden structures newly-built on the nearby estate of the architect Maximilen Siffait, known as the Folies Siffait. There are several pages of studies of these sites in this volume. A list of these is provided in the sketchbook introduction. In 1829, Turner exhibited an oil painting entitled The Banks of the Loire (Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts) at the Royal Academy which incorporated the buildings of the Folies Siffait.1