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 Six Views of Givet and Fort Charlemont from the North 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Six Views of Givet and Fort Charlemont from the North’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 57 Verso:
Six Views of Givet and Fort Charlemont from the North 1824
D19664
Turner Bequest CCXVI 57 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
Watermark ‘smith & [allnut] | 18[22]’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner has drawn six slight views of the frontier town of Givet, situated in northern France just moments away from the Belgian border. Givet is dominated by the vast fortress of Charlemont, a citadel constructed in the 1550s by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and extended by Vauban in 1696.1 As Turner shows in these swiftly wrought sketches, Charlemont stands atop a steep-sided limestone ridge overlooking the Meuse. Further views of Givet and its fortress are found on Tate D19665–D19671; Turner Bequest 58–61; for later drawings dating from 1839 see Tate D28170–D28185, D28187; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 2a–10, 11.
1
‘Givet’, Fortified Places, accessed 9 April 2014, http://www.fortified-places.com/givet/
Technical notes:
There are two small brown stains very close to the gutter of the sketchbook at centre and at bottom left.

Alice Rylance-Watson
March 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Six Views of Givet and Fort Charlemont from the North 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-six-views-of-givet-and-fort-charlemont-from-the-north-r1174452, accessed 25 April 2024.