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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Huy and Dinant Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dinant, Looking Downstream from the West Bank: Dinant, Looking Downstream from the East Bank by the Town Hall; View down the Moselle towards the Roman Bridge at Trier with the City on the Right and Details of its Spires Repeated Above 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dinant, Looking Downstream from the West Bank: Dinant, Looking Downstream from the East Bank by the Town Hall; View down the Moselle towards the Roman Bridge at Trier with the City on the Right and Details of its Spires Repeated Above’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Verso
Dinant, Looking Downstream from the West Bank: Dinant, Looking Downstream from the East Bank by the Town Hall; View down the Moselle towards the Roman Bridge at Trier with the City on the Right and Details of its Spires Repeated Above 1824
D20111
Turner Bequest CCXVII 17 a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 162 x 99 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘St ?Nilo’, ‘L[...]’ top left (in accordance with orientation of image); ‘?Bell’, ‘Niche’ centre left; ‘Cloaths Dry’, ‘Fair’, ‘Long R[...]’ centre right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook orientated to portrait format, Turner has taken a series of small-scale views of Dinant, and at the lowermost register, a sketch of Trier. Those of Dinant feature the bridge, citadel, and Church of Notre-Dame (as seen in D20109–D20110; Turner Bequest CCXVII 16–17) as well as figures and boats on the banks of the Meuse. Turner has drawn a separate and tiny detail of a church to the bottom left of the second of these studies, annotating its tower with the word ‘Bell’. Other inscriptions include ‘Cloaths dry[ing]’, probably a reminder of some of the sights and activities he encountered whilst quayside at Dinant.
Turner took the lowermost sketch of Trier from the left bank of the Meuse near the village of Pallien. The city is seen from a distance and the profiles of its celebrated ecclesiastical buildings are rendered summarily. At left, in the foreground, Turner records a figure driving a cart on the road leading towards the Roman Bridge. Trier is shown again in this sketchbook on Tate D20115; Turner Bequest CCXVII 21.

Alice Rylance-Watson
January 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Dinant, Looking Downstream from the West Bank: Dinant, Looking Downstream from the East Bank by the Town Hall; View down the Moselle towards the Roman Bridge at Trier with the City on the Right and Details of its Spires Repeated Above 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-dinant-looking-downstream-from-the-west-bank-dinant-looking-r1174308, accessed 23 April 2024.