Joseph Mallord William Turner

Here Turner makes a rough drawing of a rock face which rises vertically above a small house and bridge on the banks on the Meuse. Beneath this drawing, with the sketchbook orientated inversely to the foliation, a distant view of Huy is depicted, taken from nearby hillsides to the north.1 The remaining sketch depicts the tower of the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame at Huy and the defensive citadel atop the heights. As Powell points out, Turner took this view from the Maison de Batta, a sixteenth- to seventeenth-century mansion which gives onto the opposite bank of the Meuse. The artist has inscribed the numbers ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’.

For other views of Huy in this sketchbook see Tate D28043, D28048, D28053, D28057, D28067, D28096, D28132–D28137, D28139–D28143, D28147, D28149; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 1a, 4, 6a, 8a, 13a, 28a, 48–50a, 51a–53a, 56a, 57a. There are also a number of colour sketches in gouache with watercolour and pen and ink produced on blue paper dated around 1839 (Tate D20221, D20222, D20226, D20268, D20288; Turner Bequest CCXX N, O, S; CCXXII I, CCXXIII C).

For earlier views of Huy see the 1824 Huy and Dinant sketchbook (Tate D20087–D20093, D20109–D20110; Turner Bequest CCXVII 2a–6a, 16–7); the Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of the same date (Tate D19622–D19635; Turner Bequest CCXVI 36–43) and the Brussels up to Mannheim sketchbook of 1833 (Tate D29653, D29656–D29659, D29661–D29662, D29768, D29771; Turner Bequest 29, 30a–32, 33–33a, 90, 91a).