Joseph Mallord William Turner Le Havre: Tour de François Ier c.1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
Le Havre: Tour de François Ier
c.1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Le Havre: Tour de François Ier c.1832
D24699
Turner Bequest CCLIX 134
Turner Bequest CCLIX 134
Gouache and watercolour with pen on blue paper, 140 x 192 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX – 134’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX – 134’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1904
National Gallery, London, various dates to at least 1904 (158, as ‘Havre: Twilight Outside the Port’).
1981
Turner en France: aquarelles, peintures, dessins, gravures, carnets de croquis / Turner in France: Watercolours, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, Sketchbooks, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris, October 1981–January 1982 (91).
1988
Summer Miscellany: Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, London, July–October 1988.
1995
Making & Meaning: Turner: The Fighting Temeraire, National Gallery, London, July–October 1995 (40).
1989
Summer Miscellany: Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, London, July–September 1989.
1999
Turner on the Seine, Tate Gallery, London, June–October 1999, Pavillon des Arts, Paris, October 1999–January 2000, Musée Malraux, Le Havre, March–June (116).
2004
TurnerWhistlerMonet, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, June–September 2004, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, October–January 2005, Tate Britain, London, February–May (11).
2008
Тёрнер [Turner] (1775–1851), Pushkin Museum of Art, Moscow, November 2008–February 2009 (78).
2009
Turner from the Tate Collection, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, April–July 2009 (78).
2017
Impression(s), soleil, MuMa-Musée d’art modern André Malraux, Le Havre, 10 September–8 October 2017 (3).
References
1834
Leitch Ritchie, Wanderings by the Seine (from its embouchure to Rouen) with Twenty Engravings from Drawings by J.M.W. Turner, Esq., R.A., London, Paris and Berlin 1834, p.804.
1833
Examiner, 22 December 1833, p.806.
1834
Arnold’s Magazine of the Fine Arts, February 1834, p.394.
1903
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume III: Modern Painters: Volume I: Containing Parts I and II: Of General Principles; and Of Truth, London 1903, p.367.
1904
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn eds., Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, pp.387, 615 no.158, as ‘Havre: Twilight Outside the Port’.
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.796, CCLIX 134, as ‘Havre: Twilight outside the port’.
1913
W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., vol.II, London 1913, p.265 under no.455.
1977
Nicholas J. Alfrey, ‘Turner and the French Rivers’, unpublished MA Report, Courtauld Institute, University of London 1977, pp.63–4.
1979
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.412 no.953, reproduced, as ‘Havre, Tower of Frances I: twilight outside the port’.
1981
Maurice Guillaud, Nicholas Alfrey, Andrew Wilton and others, Turner en France: aquarelles, peintures, dessins, gravures, carnets de croquis / Turner in France: Watercolours, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, Sketchbooks, exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris 1981, no.90, pp.396–7, fig.719.
1987
William S. Rodner, ‘Turner and Steamboats on the Seine’, Turner Studies, vol.7, no.2, Winter 1987, pp.38–40, fig.5.
1990
Luke Herrmann, Turner Prints: The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 1990, p.172.
1995
Judy Egerton, Martin Wyld and Ashok Roy, Making & Meaning: Turner: The Fighting Temeraire, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery, London 1995, pp.61–2, 86, p.127 notes 73 and 74, p.135 no.40.
1997
William S. Rodner, J.M.W. Turner: Romantic Painter of the Industrial Revolution, Berkeley and London 1997, p.34, fig.7.
1999
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.69, 70, 99, 257 note 27, 259 note 13, fig.65 (colour).
2004
Katharine Lochnan, Luce Abélès, John House and others, TurnerWhistlerMonet, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 2004, p.88 no.11, reproduced in colour p.89.
2008
Anna Poznanskaya, Ian Warrell, Matthew Imms and others, Тёрнер [Turner], exhibition catalogue, Pushkin Museum of Art, Moscow 2008, pp.23, 26, 117, 131 under no.79.
2009
Fan Di’an, Ian Warrell, Matthew Imms and others, Turner from the Tate Collection, exhibition catalogue, National Art Museum of China, Beijing 2009, pp.24, 107, 180 under no.79.
2017
Annette Haudiquet and others, Impression(s), soleil, exhibition catalogue, MuMa-Musée d’art modern André Malraux, Le Havre, 2017, p.66 no.3, reproduced in colour p.220).
Engraved:
By Robert Wallace in 1833, published in 1853.
By Robert Wallace in 1833, published in 1853.
In this watercolour, Turner portrays a sailing boat and a steam-tug by the Tower of François Ier (subsequently destroyed in 18611) at the port of Le Havre in northern France. The warm yellow shades of sunset turning to twilight in the sky, and the auburn tones of the sails, as well as the yellow flame burning in the light-tower at left, provide a contrast with the lilac and violet colours with which the tower is depicted. Streaks of blue and yellow in the foreground evocatively convey the calm movement of water. The juxtaposition of steamboats and sailboats as symbols of new and old is a motif in Turner’s art. It is also presented in two other watercolours in this series, Between Quillebeuf and Villequier,c.1832 (Tate D24669; Turner Bequest CCLIX 104), Light-Towers of la Hève (Vignette), c.1832 (D24701; CCLIX 136) and most famously in Turner’s oil painting The Fighting ‘Temeraire’ of 1839 (Turner Bequest, National Gallery, London2).3 Art historian Judy Egerton4 draws attention to a similar juxtaposition of boat and tower in the painting, Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 1648 (National Gallery, London),5 by the renowned French artist Claude Lorraine, whom Turner admired.
The watercolour was based on pencil sketches (Tate D23482–D23483; Turner Bequest CCLI 13a–14) in Turner’s Rouen, Le Havre, Caen, Bayeux and Isigny sketchbook from 1826, and others (Tate D23976–D23977; Turner Bequest CCLIV 48a, 49) in his Seine and Paris sketchbook from 1832.6
An engraving was made from the watercolour by Robert Wallace in 1833, as Havre (Tate impression T04699) for the volume Wanderings by the Seine of 18347 (listed as ‘Havre: Tower of Francis I’ in the ‘List of Engravings’). In the engraving, the letters ‘CB’ have been added to the sail of the boat at right, as have two figures further right.
‘Tour François-Ier’, www.avenio.ville-lehavre.fr , accessed 17 March 2017, http://avenio.ville-lehavre.fr/4DCGI/Web_VoirLaNotice/07_03/121/ILUMP6310 .
Verso:
Previous records note the inscription ‘Havre de Grace No 4/ 2’, however at the time of writing the work was on loan and not available for inspection and confirmation.
Caroline South
November 2017
How to cite
Caroline South, ‘Le Havre: Tour de François Ier c.1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2019, https://www