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 Huy and its Citadel from the Hillside to the West, Looking Downstream; The Castle of Crèvecoeur and the Church of Bouvignes, Looking Downstream from the Hill opposite Dinant 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Huy and its Citadel from the Hillside to the West, Looking Downstream; The Castle of Crèvecoeur and the Church of Bouvignes, Looking Downstream from the Hill opposite Dinant’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 51 Verso:
Huy and its Citadel from the Hillside to the West, Looking Downstream; The Castle of Crèvecoeur and the Church of Bouvignes, Looking Downstream from the Hill opposite Dinant 1839
D28139
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 51 a
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 94 x 154 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The larger of these sketches is compositionally similar to a drawing on folio 52 verso of this sketchbook (Tate D28141; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 52 a) and to two colour drawings on blue paper of Huy seen from a westerly perspective (Tate D20222, D20288; Turner Bequest CCXX O, CCXXIII C). As Cecilia Powell explains, this would be the view ‘seen by the traveller rounding the curve of the Meuse beneath Mont Picard and looking downstream to the widest façade of the fort [the citadel]... and the sturdy west tower of the church [of Notre-Dame]’.1
With the sketchbook turned in accordance with the foliation, Turner has drawn a small sketch on the lowermost register of the page. This depicts the ruins of the medieval castle of Crèvecoeur and the church of Bouvignes built into the rocky topography surrounding the Meuse valley. At the time Bouvignes was a small village moments north of Dinant and provided an impressive viewpoint from which to sketch the town from a distance.

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2013

1
Powell 1991, p.154 no.89.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Huy and its Citadel from the Hillside to the West, Looking Downstream; The Castle of Crèvecoeur and the Church of Bouvignes, Looking Downstream from the Hill opposite Dinant 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-huy-and-its-citadel-from-the-hillside-to-the-west-looking-r1150413, accessed 22 September 2024.