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

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 19, 20 and 22 (D35478, D35480, D35484; Turner Bequest CCCLX 20, 21, 23). In this instance, a row of candelabra can be picked out along the centre of the page. 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, some twenty miles up the coast from Dieppe. The decorative elements featured here, though loosely sketched in, 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, Chateau 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.

Technical notes:

Turner mostly worked on the rectos of this sketchbook as foliated with the exception of four sketches, including this one, which feature on the verso. After the volume entered the national collection John Ruskin numbered each folio on the bottom right of each recto in a single sequence, irrespective of the side of the page upon which the drawing appeared. As a consequence, Ruskin’s red ink number and the subsequent stamped Turner Bequest number appear on the other side of the leaf. The recto is otherwise blank except for watercolour transference and brush-strokes continued over from folio 20 verso opposite (D35480; Turner Bequest CCCLX 21). There is also a patch of light brown discolouration on the recto in the bottom left corner.