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 ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Groups of Figures; The Tower of Notre-Dame, Mézières; A Town, Probably Mézières 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Groups of Figures; The Tower of Notre-Dame, Mézières; A Town, Probably Mézières’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Recto:
Groups of Figures; The Tower of Notre-Dame, Mézières; A Town, Probably Mézières 1824
D19639
Turner Bequest CCXVI 45
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Colour [?Pale]’ top left; ‘Mez’ (inverted) top right; ‘M’ (inverted) bottom centre towards left
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘45’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–45’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The two groups of figures, including the group of women in local dress at centre, are most likely a continuation of the studies taken from a quay close to the Pont des Arches at Liège (Tate D19638; Turner Bequest CCXVI 44a). The remaining sketches, orientated inversely relative to the foliation, are of Mézières, a French city now annexed to Charleville in the north-easterly Ardennes region. Turner has made a sketch of the tower of the Basilica of Notre-Dame d’Espérance at left, and two cursory jottings of the city from a distance at rear. Charleville-Mézières and its environs are pictured elsewhere in this sketchbook on Tate D19681, D19683–D19685; Turner Bequest CCXVII 66, 67–68.

Alice Rylance-Watson
March 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Groups of Figures; The Tower of Notre-Dame, Mézières; A Town, Probably Mézières 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 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-groups-of-figures-the-tower-of-notre-dame-mezieres-a-town-r1174427, accessed 20 April 2024.