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 > Marseilles to Genoa Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Old Town of Nice, from the Right Bank of the River Paillon 1828

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Old Town of Nice, from the Right Bank of the River Paillon’ 1828
Folio 8 Recto:
The Old Town of Nice, from the Right Bank of the River Paillon 1828
D21147
Turner Bequest CCXXXI 8
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 174 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[?white]’ top centre, with lines to buildings
Inscribed in red ink ‘8’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXI 8’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch, with the page turned horizontally, depicts the old town of Nice seen from the right bank of the River Paillon.1 Visible in the centre is the Pont Vieux (Old Bridge), with the tower of Convent of Saint-François rising behind it, while to the right is the church of Saint Martin and Saint Augustine. The Paillon was culverted at the end of the nineteenth century and can no longer be seen flowing through Nice, although similar prospects to the one drawn here can be found within archival images, and the former river course is echoed by the shape of the present-day Promenade de Paillon.2
In the foreground to the left, Turner has included a figurative detail, described by Maurice Guillaud as a man ‘overwhelmed by the heat’ with a handkerchief on his head ‘held by a string to protect himself from the sun’.3
Further sketches of Nice from a distance can be seen on folios 6 verso–7 verso (D21144–D21146), the verso of this leaf and folios 9 recto and verso (D21148–D21150). For a similar but more detailed prospect of Nice and the Pont Vieux from Turner’s 1838 tour of France and Italy, see the Coast of Genoa sketchbook (Tate D21280; Turner Bequest CCXXXII 5a).

Nicola Moorby
March 2017

Revised by Hannah Kaspar
November 2024

1
See Guillaud, Alfrey, Wilton and others 1981, p.285; see also Roland Courtot, ‘Les Carnets de William Turner: Recherches d’identification et de localisation des dessins’, unpublished research notes, Université de Provence à Aix, April 2008, p.3, as ‘Nice’ (shared with former Tate cataloguer Nicola Moorby in email correspondence at that date).
2
See for example a watercolour by Clément Roassal, c.1832, accessed March 2017, http://vudubalcon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/le-paillon-au-fil-du-temps.html.
3
Guillaud, Alfrey, Wilton and others 1981, p.285.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Old Town of Nice, from the Right Bank of the River Paillon 1828’, catalogue entry, March 2017, revised by Hannah Kaspar, November 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-old-town-of-nice-from-the-right-bank-of-the-river-paillon-r1209825, accessed 15 April 2025.