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

These three sketches depict Tilleur, a village now incorporated into the municipality of Seraing. The church shown in each drawing is presumably the now destroyed Eglise Saint-Hubert, a building dating back to 1332 and which stood on Rue Vieille Eglise (‘Old Church Street’).1

By the time of Turner’s visit in 1824, Tilleur has been incorporated into a burgeoning industrial complex established by the British manufacturer John Cockerill (1790–1840). Turner’s inscription ‘Floats of Unbarked Timber Trees lasht’, then, may refer to the activities at Cockerill’s plant, as wood would have been both a fuel and construction material. In 1817, Cockerill constructed an iron foundry and machine-building factory at Seraing, soon expanding his enterprises to coke-fired blast furnaces, a manufactory of steam engines and railway locomotives, coal mining and collieries.2 The magnate and his brother Charles James also purchased the former summer palace of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège at Seraing, a building which is now referred to as Chateau Cockerill (see Tate D19607; Turner Bequest CCXVI 28a).3