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

Many of the sketches within this sketchbook are very rough and hasty, having been drawn from a moving vehicle or in challenging conditions. This drawing, however, is an unusually detailed and precise study indicating that Turner devoted a good deal of time and care to it. The subject is the cathedral at Beauvais (Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais), a city in the Oise region of France, approximately fifty miles north of Paris.1 Begun during the thirteenth century, the striking Gothic building was never finished and unusually lacks a nave and a steeple.

Turner’s viewpoint for the sketch is to the south-east of the cathedral, from the square known as the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. The area contained a number of historic houses dating from as early as the twelfth century, and visible on the right-hand side is the Maison de Trois Piliers (House of the Three Pillars), a thirteenth-century house notable for its decorated columns. During the nineteenth century, the house was an inn (Aux Trois Piliers) and was recommended by guide books as a good location for an interior view of Beauvais and the cathedral.2 Many artists chose to depict the same vista as recorded here by Turner.3 However, like much of the city the house was destroyed by bombardment during the Second World War.

The study is the only drawing within this sketchbook devoted to a location north of Paris.