Joseph Mallord William Turner

The first two views on this page of slight and swiftly rendered sketches shows Huy at a distance, taken from a vantage point on the Liège road (see also Tate D19633–D19634; Turner Bequest CCXVI 42–42a). Turner has marked out where ‘Vines’ grow up the valley slopes at top right. The third sketch depicts the stretch of the Meuse between Huy and Chokier, where grapes for wine-making are also cultivated on the low slope at left. Chokier is also the subject of Turner’s lowermost sketch, with its castle ‘perched upon a lofty rock’, as Bartholomew Stritch writes, almost ‘impending over the stream... threatening to topple down upon the heads of the spectators with all its bastions, towers, and crenelated walls’.1 For more drawings of Chokier and its chateau see Tate D1961–D19618, D19636, D20085; Turner Bequest CCXVI 30a–34, 43a, CCXVII 1a.