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 Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the Citadelle St-Elme 1828

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the Citadelle St-Elme’ 1828
Folio 10 Verso:
Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the Citadelle St-Elme 1828
D21152
Turner Bequest CCXXXI 10a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 174 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this detailed sketch, with the page turned horizontally, is Villefranche-sur-Mer, a harbour town on the south coast of France between Nice and Monaco.1 The geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has identified the artist’s elevated viewpoint as the sixteenth-century Citadelle St-Elme, looking north across the bay towards the heart of the old town with the Baroque church of Saint-Michel to the left of centre and, to the right, the Tour de la Darse (tower of the Old Harbour).2 A variant view from the citadel can be found on folio 13 recto (D21157), among further sketches of Villefranche-sur-mer on folios 11 recto–14 verso (D21153–D21160).

Nicola Moorby
March 2017

Revised by Hannah Kaspar
November 2024

1
Guillaud, Alfrey, Wilton and others 1981, p.286.
2
See Roland Courtot, ‘Les Carnets de William Turner: Recherches d’identification et de localisation des dessins’, unpublished research notes, Université de Provence à Aix, April 2008, p.3, as ‘Villefranche-sur-mer’ (shared with former Tate cataloguer Nicola Moorby in email correspondence at that date).

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the Citadelle St-Elme 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/villefranche-sur-mer-from-the-citadelle-st-elme-r1209830, accessed 15 April 2025.