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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern France 1832 > Seine and Paris Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Recto:
?Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France 1832
D23901
Turner Bequest CCLIV 11
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘11’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIV – 11’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with a riverside view with dark, cloud-like foliage and a long, arched bridge. Turner’s handling here is too cursory for the identification of a definite location although neighbouring pages of the volume heavily feature the landscape around Saint-Cloud, some seven miles west of Paris, where the Seine is traversed by this kind of bridge.1 Loose marks resembling a classical urn and balustrade in the centre foreground may suggest that Turner was located in the waterside palace gardens at the Château de Saint-Cloud when he took this sketch. For comparisons, see examples of the watercolours of this area which Turner worked up with a view to engraved reproduction around this time; Tate D24688 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 123), D24689 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 124), and D24697 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 132).
A list of pages in the sketchbook featuring Saint-Cloud is provided in the entry for folio 17 verso (D23914; Turner Bequest CCLIV 17a).

John Chu
July 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.55, 223–8.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘?Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France 1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-saint-cloud-le-de-france-r1173306, accessed 22 July 2024.