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

At the top of this page, Turner included a sketch of the hilltop Château de Claremont. This seventeenth-century edifice is located on the River Loire some thirteen miles upstream of Nantes. The rest of the drawings depict 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