Les Rives de la Loire

In 1826 Turner worked his way up the Loire from Nantes with a sketchbook. The Napoleonic wars were a decade behind him, the Continent was open to British travellers again, and he was collecting river views to be engraved and sold at home. This oil came out of that journey and hung at the Royal Academy in 1829. He was not being a topographer about it. Turner shifted bridges, castles and boats to build the composition he wanted, which is part of why the exact stretch of river is hard to place. The Loire drawings reached the public in 1833 as a small book of engravings, Turner's Annual Tour, sized for a drawing-room table rather than a gallery wall.