Cecilia Powell has remarked on Turner’s fondness for castles, noting how ‘ancient turreted castles ... are remarkably frequent in Turner’s sketches along the valley of the Rhone.’
1 She cited this work in her observations, together with folios 4 recto–6 recto, 12 verso–13 verso; 23 recto and verso, and 37 recto–39 recto (
D20996–D21000,
D21013–D21015,
D21034–D21036,
D21060–D21064; Turner Bequest CCXXX 36–38 ). Powell identified the oil painting
A View overlooking a Lake, since retitled
The Banks of the Loire (Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts),
2 as being among the eight or so pictures executed by the artist during his stay in Rome in the autumn and winter of 1828, a commission for his patron General Sir James Willoughby Gordon. While Powell conceded that the painting lacks a precise resemblance to a specific study in the
Lyons to Marseilles sketchbook, she concluded that it ‘must surely derive from Turner’s memories of the scenes which they depict’.
3 More recently, in 1997, Ian Warrell has proposed the Loire Valley – rather than the Rhône – as the location depicted in Gordon’s canvas, noting its similarity to Turner’s watercolour and gouache study of c.1826–8,
Folies-Siffait and Oudon, Loire Valley (Tate
D24703; Turner Bequest CCLIX 138).
