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 North 1828

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the North’ 1828
Folio 11 Verso:
Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the North 1828
D21154
Turner Bequest CCXXXI 11a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 174 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner made several sketches of 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 viewpoint for this vista, with the page turned horizontally, as the road to Ventimiglia leading north away from the town,2 looking south across the bay with the sixteenth-century Citadelle St-Elme visible near the shoreline to the left, and the fortress of Mont Alban at the summit of the hill in the centre.
For further sketches of Villefranche-sur-Mer see folios 10 verso–11 recto and 12 recto–14 verso (D21152–D21153, D21155–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See Roland Courtot, ‘Les Carnets de William Turner: Recherches d’identification et de localisation des dessins’, unpublished research notes, Université de Provence à Aix, April 2008, p.3, as ‘Villefranche-sur-mer’ (shared with former Tate cataloguer Nicola Moorby in email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 North 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-north-r1209832, accessed 15 April 2025.