Joseph Mallord William Turner

The limestone rock formations and cliffs at Samson and nearby Marche-les-Dames are the Meuse’s celebrated natural monuments. In these three studies, Turner pictures the variety ‘of lofty, abrupt and sombre-tinted rocks overhanging the bed of the river’, as Bartholomew Stritch puts it; the artist’s jagged and tremulous line suggesting their time-worn fissures and grooves.1 Other studies of Mosan geology include: Tate D19644, D19646, D20058–D20059, D20262, D24736, D28129–D28130; Turner Bequest CCXVI 47a, 48a, 259–259a, CCXXII C, CCLIX 171, CCLXXXVII 46a–47.