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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Second Italian Tour 1828-9 > Lyons to Marseilles Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Views of the Rhône Valley, with Saint-Vallier and the Castle at ?Serves-sur-Rhône 1828

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Views of the Rhône Valley, with Saint-Vallier and the Castle at ?Serves-sur-Rhône’ 1828
Folio 12 Recto:
Views of the Rhône Valley, with Saint-Vallier and the Castle at ?Serves-sur-Rhône 1828
D21012
Turner Bequest CCXXX 12
Pencil on cream lined wove paper, 145 x 111 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘St Vallier’, above centre
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘12’ bottom left, upside down, and ‘4’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXX 12’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Travelling by boat from Lyon to Avignon along the Rhône valley, Turner encountered Saint-Vallier on the left bank of the river. The topography of the town is the subject of the second sketch from the top, which is annotated beneath with the inscription ‘St Vallier’. From his vantage point upstream, Turner rapidly outlined the buildings and towers of the approaching town, including the Church of Saint-Valéry to the right. The cursory study above is possibly a more distant view of the approaching town. Loosely defined sailing vessels along the Rhône fill the lower half of the page. Turner executed these three views with the sketchbook inverted.
With the sketchbook turned upright, Turner produced a thumbnail detail of a building at the bottom of the page, which the geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has identified as the ruined castle at Serves-sur-Rhône. Detailed depictions of this subject appear overleaf on folios 12 verso and 13 recto (D21013–D21014).1

Hannah Kaspar
March 2024

1
Roland Courtot, ‘6. Le carnet du voyage de Turner de Lyon à Marseille (CCXXX) (1)’, Carnets de voyage de Turner, accessed 29 January 2024, https://carnetswt.hypotheses.org/463.

How to cite

Hannah Kaspar, ‘Views of the Rhône Valley, with Saint-Vallier and the Castle at ?Serves-sur-Rhône 1828’, catalogue entry, March 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2025, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/views-of-the-rhone-valley-with-saint-vallier-and-the-castle-at-serves-sur-rhone-r1209673, accessed 17 April 2025.