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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Autumn Tour of Northern France 1845 > Dieppe Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Grand Interior ?at the Château d'Eu 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Grand Interior ?at the Château d'Eu’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 19 Verso:
A Grand Interior ?at the Château d’Eu 1845
D35478
Turner Bequest CCCLX 20
Pencil, gouache and watercolour on white wove paper, 232 x 332 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘4’ bottom right (see Technical notes to sketchbook Introduction)
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of the four loose watercolour sketches in the volume depicting figures in sumptuously appointed interiors. The others are the versos of folios 20, 21 and 22 (D35480, D35482, D35484; Turner Bequest CCCLX 21–23). In this instance, a dark candelabrum can be picked out at the centre of the page, along with large figured wall decorations at the rear. As set out in the Introduction to this tour, there is evidence to suggest that King Louis-Philippe summoned Turner on this tour in order to record the events of Queen Victoria’s second visit to the Château d’Eu, located twenty miles up the coast from Dieppe. The decorative elements featured here, though loosely sketched, are consistent with the state apartments of the Château d’Eu as detailed in the meticulous watercolours commissioned from Eugène Lami (1800–1890) by Louis-Philippe as a gift for Victoria to commemorate her 1843 visit.1 See especially Lami’s Royal Visit to Louis-Philippe: the Salon de Famille, Château d’Eu (Royal Collection).2
For reasons set out in the Technical notes in the sketchbook Introduction, this work appears inverted in relation to the volume as foliated.
1
Paul André Lemoisne, L’OEuvre d’Eugène Lami (1800–1890) Lithographes-dessins-aquarelles-peintres. Essai d’un catalogue raisonné, Paris 1914, pp.116–20, nos. 495, 496, 498, 500, 502, 504, 506, 507.
2
Ibid., p.119, no.505. For other interior depictions of the Château d’Eu in the 1840s, see also Pierre F.L. Fontaine, Château d’Eu, Paris c.1845.
On recto:
Blank; except for ‘20’ inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink and ‘CCCLX 20’ stamped in the bottom right corner, referring to the present sketch.

John Chu
February 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘A Grand Interior ?at the Château d’Eu 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 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-a-grand-interior-at-the-chateau-deu-r1173574, accessed 21 November 2024.