Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A. (1775-1851)

This work, in Turner's distinctive technique of bodycolour on torn sheets of blue paper, was painted to be engraved in the third, 1835, volume of Turner's Annual Tour, also known as the Rivers of France. The project, 'under the superintendence' of Charles Heath, with text by Leitch Ritchie, was published by Longman. Planned as annual gift books, the volumes were in fact issued in the autumn preceding the year to which they were attributed, beginning in the autumn of 1832 with Wanderings by the Loire of 1833; two volumes of Wanderings by the Seine were dated 1834 and 1835. Whereas the illustrations of the Loire volume derived from a tour of as early as 1826, those of the Seine seemed to have been based on recent drawings, probably of 1832. Most of the Seine drawings are in the Turner bequest.