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 Rocks on the Meuse above House and Bridge; Huy, from Hillside to the North; The Church, Citadel and Quai aux Charbons, Huy, from the Maison de Batta 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Rocks on the Meuse above House and Bridge; Huy, from Hillside to the North; The Church, Citadel and Quai aux Charbons, Huy, from the Maison de Batta’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 47 Verso:
Rocks on the Meuse above House and Bridge; Huy, from Hillside to the North; The Church, Citadel and Quai aux Charbons, Huy, from the Maison de Batta 1839
D28131
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 47 a
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 154 x 94 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ against architecture in lower sketch
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner makes a rough drawing of a rock face which rises vertically above a small house and bridge on the banks on the Meuse. Beneath this drawing, with the sketchbook orientated inversely to the foliation, a distant view of Huy is depicted, taken from nearby hillsides to the north.1 The remaining sketch depicts the tower of the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame at Huy and the defensive citadel atop the heights. As Powell points out, Turner took this view from the Maison de Batta, a sixteenth- to seventeenth-century mansion which gives onto the opposite bank of the Meuse. The artist has inscribed the numbers ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’.
For other views of Huy in this sketchbook see Tate D28043, D28048, D28053, D28057, D28067, D28096, D28132–D28137, D28139–D28143, D28147, D28149; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 1a, 4, 6a, 8a, 13a, 28a, 48–50a, 51a–53a, 56a, 57a. There are also a number of colour sketches in gouache with watercolour and pen and ink produced on blue paper dated around 1839 (Tate D20221, D20222, D20226, D20268, D20288; Turner Bequest CCXX N, O, S; CCXXII I, CCXXIII C).
For earlier views of Huy see the 1824 Huy and Dinant sketchbook (Tate D20087–D20093, D20109–D20110; Turner Bequest CCXVII 2a–6a, 16–7); the Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of the same date (Tate D19622–D19635; Turner Bequest CCXVI 36–43) and the Brussels up to Mannheim sketchbook of 1833 (Tate D29653, D29656–D29659, D29661–D29662, D29768, D29771; Turner Bequest 29, 30a–32, 33–33a, 90, 91a).

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2013

1
Powell 1991, Appendix p.214.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Rocks on the Meuse above House and Bridge; Huy, from Hillside to the North; The Church, Citadel and Quai aux Charbons, Huy, from the Maison de Batta 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-rocks-on-the-meuse-above-house-and-bridge-huy-from-hillside-r1150405, accessed 16 April 2024.