Turner's Amboise of 1826

Château Royal d'Amboise c.1826-30, J. M. W. Turner

Many know Turner, the artist. Many know Louis-Philippe, the last king of France. Not many know that the son of a poor Londoner and the French aristocrat, admired each other, became friends and stayed friends or that in October 1826 Turner came to Amboise to sketch the Royal Château. It was empty. Louis Philippe was not invited to be King of the French until 1830.

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Francophile Turner, starved of his fix for so long, was able once again to visit France for his sixth but not last time.

Starting from Nantes, he travelled up the Loire from its mouth to Orleans, Saumur, Tours, Amboise and Blois drawing furiously as he went.

He travelled between Rochecorbon, Montcontour, Vouvray, Montlouis, Tours and Amboise by Diligence, a Stage/Post Coach, a large lumbering vehicle which ran regular services between towns for paying passengers. Turner’s only guide book was a timetable for the Diligence.

After spending two nights in Tours, Turner arrived in Amboise either on the 9th or 10th of October. He was 51. It’s thought, because he sketched the town at sunrise and at sunset, he spent at least one night there. Where is not known. He didn’t leave written records of his journeys but he did fill pages with drawings of Amboise.

Château Royal d'Amboise c.1826-30, J. M. W. Turner

He sketched the Château from Isle St John (now Isle d’Or) as if he was on a boat looking up. Why he wasn’t in a boat when he made the sketch is not known. Boat was his preferred choice of travel because he liked low viewpoints.

He often exaggerated scale. Turner’s less talented critics accused him of ‘subordinating truth to imagination’ but Turner wasn’t interested in accuracy, he was guided by his emotions. He wanted the viewer to feel what he felt, he wanted an emotional response. He was justifiably incandescent with rage when engravers ‘corrected’ his paintings.

He ingeniously sketched the Loire’s dreamy landscapes and shifting light to be worked into paintings back home in the studio. He recorded his impressions. Turner was, arguably, the first Impressionist. Monet admitted to being blown away by his paintings.

Visitors standing at the same viewpoints along the Loire as Turner today would be forgiven if they assume much has changed over two hundred years. Not so. Although buildings can still be recognised, many of Turner’s rivers, streams, tracks and trees never existed. He used artistic licence to balance the composition.

Of his eighty or so quick sketches, all on blue paper, he chose twenty-one to be engraved for Wanderings By The Loire which is just as well because the others after almost two hundred years are too fragile to be exhibited. Indeed many were simply scribbles never intended to be seen. He also painted The Banks of The Loire in oils for the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1829. It disappeared after the Exhibition but turned up in the 1900s in Massachusetts, USA.

Turner’s Wanderings By The Loire inspired artists and tourists to visit Amboise. His views of the Loire are among the best, if not the best, ever recorded by an artist. The river was a revelation to Britons. They were aware of the Seine in Paris because it was painted so often by the Impressionists.

Turner’s friendship with Louis Philippe started in 1813 when he built Sandycombe Lodge near the Thames at Twickenham. His neighbour was an unassuming ex-geography teacher in exile from France to save his royal head from the chopping block. Madame La Guillotine had already claimed that of his father. Louis Philippe’s close friend, the Duke of Kent, the son of George III, father of Queen Victoria, gave him High Shot House in Crown Lane, Twickenham. Crown Lane not in honour of the King in Waiting, but in honour of the Crown pub opposite which Louis-Philippe and his brothers frequented.

When they met, Turner and Louis-Philippe were both thirty-eight. Turner knew France very well having visited many times. The irony is that Turner was so well off he turned down five thousand guineas (£300,000 today) for his painting Dido Building Carthage preferring to give it to the British Nation whereas Louis-Philippe’s meagre income came from the English crown.

Turner's Wanderings by the Loire was published in 1833. In 1838 when the friends met again in France, Turner gave Louis-Philippe a book of his paintings of England. Louis-Philippe gave Turner a gold snuff box. Now in the British Museum, it’s still in its original tooled and gilded leather box. It has a band of floral and foliate ornament around the sides and on the base. On the lid is a diamond and silver L-P with a crown above the monogram. At each corner is a large diamond in a silver setting. The goldsmith's marks are inside. 1838. Made in Paris.

Disembarkation of Louis-Philippe at Portsmouth, 8 October 1844 c.1844-5, J. M. W. Turner

In October 1844 Turner was in Portsmouth to record the arrival of his old friend who was in England on a State Visit at the invitation of Queen Victoria. He completed two oil paintings: one showing the king’s arrival, the other his disembarkation. Both reflect the atmosphere of the occasion. They are in The Tate London.

In 1845 Turner made two more trips to France. On the second he dined with King Louis-Philippe. Neither could know that the end was near for them both. Louis-Philippe’s reign ended in 1848.

He returned to what he called ‘dear quiet Twick’. Walking one day he bumped into a man who reminded him he “kept The Crown”. The King's response was “that is more than I did”.

Louis Philippe died in 1850. He was seventy-six. Turner died in 1851. He was seventy-six.

Post by Pamela, photography by Mark.