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 > Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Alf, with Burg Arras in the Distance 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Alf, with Burg Arras in the Distance’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Recto:
Alf, with Burg Arras in the Distance 1839
D28373
Turner Bequest CCXC 12
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 100 x 163 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘12’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXC–12’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts the town of Alf with a spired church on the right and the Burg Arras, a medieval ruined tower, in the distance.1 Villagers can be seen in the foreground, both on the banks of the river and in small rowing boats. Both the present sketch and those on folios 11 and 12 verso (Tate D28372, D28374; Turner Bequest CCXC 11a, 12a) formed the basis of a gouache, pen and ink and watercolour drawing held at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.2

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

1
‘The Castle and its History’, Arras Castle, http://www.arras.de/html/castle.html, accessed 15 July 2013.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.421 no.1023.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Alf, with Burg Arras in the Distance 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-alf-with-burg-arras-in-the-distance-r1150658, accessed 13 May 2024.