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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Second Italian Tour 1828-9 > Lyons to Marseilles Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Tower of Valois Sainte-Colombe, Vienne; Views of the Rhône Valley 1828

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Tower of Valois Sainte-Colombe, Vienne; Views of the Rhône Valley’ 1828
Folio 6 Verso:
The Tower of Valois Sainte-Colombe, Vienne; Views of the Rhône Valley 1828
D21001
Turner Bequest CCXXX 6a
Pencil on cream lined wove paper, 145 x 111 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
South of Lyon is the riverside town of Vienne, which Turner encountered during an early leg of his two-day boat journey to Avignon. He used this page to trace buildings and partial topographical profiles, which are inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. Their cursory appearance is a reminder of the speed at which Turner worked, as he recorded the passing scenery the Rhône.
The geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has identified the two upper sketches as the twelfth-century Tower of Valois Sainte-Colombe in Vienne, located on the right bank of the Rhône.1 The outlines beneath are too schematic to be conclusively identified, although they likely depict landscapes near Vienne. Further studies of Vienne appear on folios 5 verso and 6 recto, and on folio 7 recto and verso (D20999–D21000, D21002–D21003).

Hannah Kaspar
March 2024

1
Roland Courtot, ‘6. Le carnet du voyage de Turner de Lyon à Marseille (CCXXX) (1)’, Carnets de voyage de Turner, accessed 29 January 2024, https://carnetswt.hypotheses.org/463.

How to cite

Hannah Kaspar, ‘The Tower of Valois Sainte-Colombe, Vienne; Views of the Rhône Valley 1828’, catalogue entry, March 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2025, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/the-tower-of-valois-sainte-colombe-vienne-views-of-the-rhone-valley-r1209662, accessed 15 April 2025.