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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled most of this page with sketches of the ruined castle at Champtoceaux located on the banks of the River Loire. At the centre of the bottom edge of the page, the remains of the old toll station are seen perched on their stone arches. In subsequent years the artist returned to his sketches of Champtoceaux with a view to finding material for engraved reproduction. This resulted in a print in Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France) mistitled Château Hamelin;1 see Tate impression T04693. The tower on the right-hand edge of the page is a fourteenth-century fortress located in the nearby settlement of Oudon. There are several pages of studies of these sites in this volume. A list of these is provided in the sketchbook introduction.