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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Spa from the Liège Road c.1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Spa from the Liège Road c.1839
D29017
Turner Bequest CCXCII 66
Gouache, pen and ink and watercolour on blue wove paper, 140 x 190 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCII 66’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Belgian town of Spa, the Scottish publisher William Chambers writes:
may be observed to consist of a cluster of neat white houses, thrown into the form of two or three irregular streets and open promenades, the whole embowered amidst trees and gardens, and overhung, on the north and east, by a woody mountain range.1
‘Highly distinguished for its springs’, Chambers continues, ‘Spa was resorted to... by many persons of wealth from England’ as a healthful place of rest and repair from which to take the healing waters.2
In this drawing, Turner depicts the town in the foothills of the Ardennes from the road leading to Liège. It is nestled in a vale highlighted with illuminating white and pale yellow gouache. The architecture of Spa, the rooftops of its local houses as well as the lofty spire of the Church of Saint-Rémacle, is loosely drawn over the top of the gouache in pen and black ink. Figures occupy the foreground in Turner’s drawing: tourists or locals, looking out onto the expansive view, and taking in the panorama of the surrounding countryside.
This gouache is based on a pencil sketch in the Spa, Dinant and Namur sketchbook of 1839 (Tate D28089; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 24a). For other colour drawings of Spa see Tate D24610, D24745, D24753, D24780, D24788; Turner Bequest CCLIX 45, 180, 188, 215, 223.
1
William Chambers, A Tour in Switzerland in 1841, London 1842, p.8.
2
Ibid.
Verso:
Inscribed in pencil ‘114 a’ towards bottom right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCXCII–66’ at bottom right and left.

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Spa from the Liège Road c.1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-spa-from-the-liege-road-r1151022, accessed 28 March 2024.