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

D35436–D35453, D35456–D35458, D40172

Turner Bequest CCCLIX 1–18, 21–23

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

The Eu and Tréport sketchbook is one of the two known ‘roll sketchbooks’ that accompanied Turner on his last Continental trip to northern France in September 1845, as discussed in the Introduction to this tour. Although the other sketchbook remains intact (Dieppe; Tate; Turner Bequest CCCLX), leaves from Eu and Tréport had begun to be removed for exhibition in the mid-nineteenth century and only eleven of the original twenty-four sketches remained by the time of A.J. Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.1 Today the sketchbook is an entirely unbound collection of rapid pencil and watercolour sketches concentrating on the town of Eu, the associated harbour of Le Tréport, and the picturesque setting of these towns on the coast of rural Normandy.

The landscape compositions worked into this sketchbook typically take the region’s major edifices as their focal point. Five of the sheets depict the town of Eu, with its long-fronted palace, Gothic collegiate church, and seventeenth-century Jesuit Chapel, as seen from high vantage points on the surrounding hills of the Bresle valley; see D35437, D35439, D35441, D35448, D35450 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 2, 4, 6, 13, 15).2 A further five sheets feature the spire of the sixteenth-century St-Jacques du Tréport as an eye-catching punctuation mark in the sketchbook’s coastal scenes; see D35438, D35447, D35452, D35456, D35458 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 3, 12, 17, 21, 23).3 Architecture plays a more dominant role in the three sketches in which the imposing forms of the Collegiate Church at Eu are seen at close quarters in both interior and exterior compositions; see D35442, D35445, D35451 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 7, 10, 16).4

Other sheets from the sketchbook record the movement of water in and around this coastal stretch of upper Normandy. Three scenes of lakes or rivers bordered by wooded banks are included, perhaps sketched in Eu’s Bresle valley; see D35444, D35446, D35453 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 9, 11, 18). Also included is a view of the ladies’ bathing beach with its little changing huts west of Le Tréport harbour; see D35456 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 21).

At the time of Turner’s visit, this area was significantly enlivened by the second official visit of Queen Victoria to King Louis-Philippe at his palace at Eu. As set out in the Introduction to this tour, there is evidence to indicate that Louis-Philippe had personally summoned Turner to Eu at this time, although nothing in Eu and Tréport can irrefutably support this. Nonetheless, several of the landscape views are closely comparable with those featured in the highly finished depictions of Victoria’s 1843 visit which the King had commissioned from Eugène Lami as a gift for the Queen.5 In 1845 Turner could have seen Lami’s larger oil copies decorating the ‘Hall of Victoria’ at the chateau. In the Voyage de La Reine Victoria au Château d’Eu (Château de Versailles, MV6872) the royal party can be seen enjoying the Normandy countryside before a view closely comparable to D35448 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 13).6 Another painting in that series, Débarquement de La Reine Victoria au Tréport (Château de Versailles, MV5665), Victoria arrives at Le Tréport, with the harbour seen at a similar angle to D35452 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 17). Ian Warrell has suggested that the mounted soldiers sketched in red ink onto D35447 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 12) could be associated with the festive royal presence at Eu and Le Tréport. If so, then the red passages in watercolour and ink that sweep through the landscapes of D35443 and D35457 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 8, 22) may be intended to depict the large and lively retinues of Victoria and Louis-Philippe after the fashion of Lami’s views.