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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with views of a grand French house surrounded by formal gardens. The artist’s note ‘Mal M’ towards the top right-hand corner of the page suggests that these sketches were taken at the Château de Malmaison, located some ten miles west of central Paris and former residence of Napoleon’s wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. Certainly Turner made several sketches of the house in the present volume, a list of which is provided in the sketchbook Introduction. These culminated in an engraved illustration for a new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–36); see Tate impression T04979.