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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > The Second Meuse-Moselle Tour 1839 > Spa, Dinant and Namur Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Confluence of the Meuse and the Sambre at Namur: Upper Sketch Looking up the Meuse; Lower Sketch Looking up the Sambre 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Confluence of the Meuse and the Sambre at Namur: Upper Sketch Looking up the Meuse; Lower Sketch Looking up the Sambre’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 41 Recto:
The Confluence of the Meuse and the Sambre at Namur: Upper Sketch Looking up the Meuse; Lower Sketch Looking up the Sambre 1839
D28119
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 41
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 94 x 154 mm
Watermarked ‘John Fe[llows] | 181[0]’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘350’ bottom right and ‘41’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXXVII–41’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook orientated horizontally, Turner has produced two linear profiles of the confluence of the Meuse and Sambre rivers at Namur, each running parallel to the other. The artist took the upper sketch looking up the Meuse, the citadel atop the heights in the background. The lower sketch looks up the Sambre, a tributary of the Meuse. Turner’s gouache, pen and ink and watercolour drawing on blue paper, The Confluence at Namur: Moonlight (Tate D24716; Turner Bequest CCLIX 151), is based on elements of both sketches.
For other views of Namur in this sketchbook see Tate D28042, D28065, D28069, D28118, D28120–D28121, D28123, D28125–D28127, D28151 – D28152; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 1, 12a, 14a, 40a, 41a–42, 43, 44a, 45a, 58a–59. See also the earlier Huy and Dinant sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D20104–D20106; Turner Bequest CCXVII 12a–14 and the 1833 Brussels up to Mannheim-Rhine sketchbook (Tate D29645, D29647, D29751; Turner Bequest CCXCVI 25, 26, 79a).

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Confluence of the Meuse and the Sambre at Namur: Upper Sketch Looking up the Meuse; Lower Sketch Looking up the Sambre 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-confluence-of-the-meuse-and-the-sambre-at-namur-upper-r1150393, accessed 19 April 2024.