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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > France c.1826-41

France: Identified or Likely Subjects Not Linked to Particular Tours c.1826–41

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This section comprises complementary groupings of drawings and watercolour studies on a variety of white, blue and grey papers, showing identified or likely French subjects which are not as yet associated with particular tours; they range from around the mid 1820s to the early 1840s. Having travelled extensively in Britain in his early career, Turner first visited France and stayed in Paris in 1802, although his first priority on that occasion was to see the Alps: see David Blayney Brown’s ‘Switzerland 1802’ section in the present catalogue. The artist returned after the Napoleonic wars on numerous dedicated tours or within wider itineraries encompassing the neighbouring Low Countries, Germany and Switzerland. See the various comprehensive sections covering tours of northern and central France in 1821, 1824, 1825, 1826, c.1827–9, 1829, 1832 and 1836. The vast scope of Turner’s French travels was addressed in 1981’s major Turner en France exhibition and catalogue. Along ...
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Grouping (1) c.1826–33
D20287, D20352, D20426, D20427, D20527, D20528, D20535, D20536, D20550, D20555, D24615, D24665, D24666, D24713, D24754, D24772, D24779, D24785, D24791, D24817, D24821, D24854, D24901, D24916, D24921, D24923, D24925, D24927, D24952, D24953, D24957, D24960, D40087, D40088, D40092, D40109, D40310, D40415
Turner Bequest CCXXIII B, CCXXIV 57, 127, 128, 214, 215, 222, 223, 234, 238, CCLIX 50, 100, 101, 148, 189, 207, 214, 220, 226, 252, 256, CCLX 18, 65, 80, 85, 87, 89, 91, 116, 117, 121, 124
Grouping (2) c.1826–41
D25000, D25008, D25011, D25015, D25016, D25026, D25027, D25031, D25033, D25036, D25041, D25043, D25063, D25068, D25075–D25077, D25081, D25100, D25105, D25106, D25213, D33704, D33715, D34132, D36199, D40098, D40100–D40102, D40135, D40136,
Turner Bequest CCLXI 28, 36, 39, 43, 44, 54, 55, 59, 61, 64, 69, 71, 91, 96, 103–105, 109, 128, CCLXII 5, 6, CCLXIII 91, CCCXLI 25, 36, 408, CCCLXIV 339
This section comprises complementary groupings of drawings and watercolour studies on a variety of white, blue and grey papers, showing identified or likely French subjects which are not as yet associated with particular tours; they range from around the mid 1820s to the early 1840s. Having travelled extensively in Britain in his early career, Turner first visited France and stayed in Paris in 1802, although his first priority on that occasion was to see the Alps: see David Blayney Brown’s ‘Switzerland 1802’ section in the present catalogue. The artist returned after the Napoleonic wars on numerous dedicated tours or within wider itineraries encompassing the neighbouring Low Countries, Germany and Switzerland. See the various comprehensive sections covering tours of northern and central France in 1821, 1824, 1825, 1826, c.1827–9, 1829, 1832 and 1836.
The vast scope of Turner’s French travels was addressed in 1981’s major Turner en France exhibition and catalogue.1 Along with relatively few oil paintings, exhibited in the years following the 1802 tour and from the mid 1820s into the early 1830s, perhaps the most accessible outcomes of these visits were the series of watercolour and gouache views along the Rivers Loire and Seine, fully addressed in Tate exhibitions and associated catalogues by Ian Warrell.2 The Seine views, engraved for books of 1834 and 1835, largely remained in Turner’s possession and hence the Turner Bequest; see Caroline South’s section ‘Wanderings by the Seine (Rivers of France) c.1832–3’. They followed a comparable series of Loire views published in 1833, the originals of which are mostly in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; together, these subjects are generally known as The Rivers of France.3
In addition, Turner also took an interest in the less familiar landscapes, towns, Roman remains and Mediterranean coast of the South of France as he made his way to Rome in 1828, and seems to have returned to the region on a dedicated tour in 1838, the scope of the latter (as distinct from the earlier route) only having come into focus in recent years.4 The present authors address these two visits elsewhere in the present catalogue. Turner rounded off over forty years’ work in the country with two brief visits to the coast and hinterland of northern France in 1845 soon after reaching seventy, concluding his long and fruitful association with the Continent.
The two subsections here, initially divided between the authors in terms of the sections devised by Finberg for his 1909 Turner Bequest Inventory5 on technical and topographical grounds, are set out in detail in their respective Introductions; a few entries by a third colleague have been added within the second grouping during concurrent research. There are numerous identified sites which Turner visited on more than one occasion, or which are as yet not clearly associated with the many documented tours of the 1820s and 1830s. In the course of research, further works have proved to be associated with existing French sections, to which entries have been transferred.
1
Maurice Guillaud, Nicholas Alfrey, Andrew Wilton and others, Turner en France: aquarelles, peintures, dessins, gravures, carnets de croquis / Turner in France: Watercolours, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, Sketchbooks, exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris 1981; for a concise account, see Ian Warrell, ‘France’ in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, pp.114–15.
2
See Ian Warrell, Turner on the Loire, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, and Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999.
3
See also Luke Herrmann, ‘The Rivers of France’, and Ian Warrell, ‘Turner’s Annual Tour’, in Joll, Butlin and Herrmann 2001, pp.264, 348–9.
4
See Ian Warrell, Alexandra Loske, Joyce H. Townsend and others, Turner et la couleur, exhibition catalogue, Hotel de Caumont centre d’art, Aix-en-Provence 2016.
5
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909.

Hayley Flynn and Hannah Kaspar
April 2024

Artworks in this grouping

How to cite

Hayley Flynn and Hannah Kaspar, ‘France: Identified or Likely Subjects Not Linked to Particular Tours c.1826–41’, April 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/france-identified-or-likely-subjects-not-linked-to-particular-tours-r1209263, accessed 21 November 2024.