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

This panoramic study of riverside buildings and a bridge forms part of a wider vista, part of which continues onto folio 2 verso (D21768) opposite. Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest assigned it the generic title Town, with river and bridges, but was unable to pinpoint a more precise location.1 More recently, the geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has identified the subject as the French city of Lyon.2 From his vantage point on the left bank of the River Saône, looking west, Turner sketched the Pont du Change, the bridge connecting the area known as the Presqu’île, to the right, and the old town across the river, overlooked by the Fourvière hill. The Pont du Change sketched here by Turner is the eleventh-century seven-arched stone bridge. It was replaced in the 1840s and sustained later damage during the Second World War, before being finally demolished in 1974.3 As Courtot noted, a feature of Turner’s depiction is the staircase that descends from the bridge to the river, allowing passengers to board a boat.4 Two boats are shown to the left.

Together with folios 1 verso and 2 recto (D21766–D21767), which also depict Lyon, this sketch falls outside the geographical itinerary embodied by this Viterbo and Ronciglione sketchbook. Chronologically, these depictions of Lyon are also noteworthy as either the earliest or the latest sketches of Turner’s 1828–9 tour of France and Italy; it is unclear whether he sketched them on the outward or return leg of his journey.

Turner first sketched Lyon in 1802, and later in 1819–20 during his first major tour of Italy: for a list of relevant works, see Nicola Moorby’s entry in the Paris, France, Savoy 2 sketchbook of 1819 (Tate D14071; Turner Bequest CLXXIII 51).