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 Distant View of Namur from the Liège Road 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant View of Namur from the Liège Road’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Verso:
Distant View of Namur from the Liège Road 1839
D28127
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 45 a
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 94 x 154 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In this sketch, rendered tentatively in slight pencil line, Turner represents Namur in the distance from the Liège road. The Meuse is identifiable by the arched bridge in the centre, the citadel complex crowning the gradient to the right. This prospect, along with two others in this sketchbook (Tate D28123, D28126; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 43, 45) and a loose pencil study on blue paper of around 1826 (Tate D20309; Turner Bequest CCXXIV 19), form the basis of a gouache, pen and ink and watercolour drawing on blue paper of the same view (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).1 See also the colour study Namur from the Fields (Tate D24711; CCLIX 146). For a similar view in an earlier sketchbook see the Brussels up to Mannheim-Rhine sketchbook of 1833 (Tate D29621, Turner Bequest CCXCVII 13).

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.421 no.1025

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Distant View of Namur from the Liège Road 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-distant-view-of-namur-from-the-liege-road-r1150401, accessed 20 April 2024.