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

Here Turner records four views of Huy taken from various locations on the outskirts of the city. The uppermost sketch, drawn from the Liège road (see Tate D19633; Turner Bequest CCXVI 42), includes the ancient ‘Convent of St Martin’ at left and a ‘Vineyard’ at right. Below, Turner pictures two prospects of the Meuse near Huy; his inscription ‘Red Castle’ presumably refers to the Château de Chokier, the towered building overlooking the river in the third sketch (see also Tate D19611–D19618, D19635–D19636, D20085; Turner Bequest CCXVI 30a–34, 43–43a, CCXVII 1a). Constructed in vivid red brick, the eighteenth-century castle commands ‘a most perilous looking site’, Bartholomew Stritch writes, ‘perched as it is upon a lofty rock’.1 The lowermost sketch shows Huy, its bridge, citadel and collegiate church, from the Ahin road in a similar view to Tate D19632; Turner Bequest CCXVI 41a.