Joseph Mallord William Turner

Ruined Castle on Hill; Château d’Arc, near Dieppe

1824

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 78 × 118 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D20024
Turner Bequest CCXVI 241

Catalogue entry

These are sketches of the ruined Château d’Arc, also known as the Château d’Arques-la-Bataille, situated approximately four miles outside Dieppe (see also D20016–D20023, D20025–D20028; Turner Bequest CCXVI 237–240a, 241a–243). Constructed in the first half of the twelfth century, the fortress was a key site of conflict during the Hundred Years War and the French Wars of Religion.1 In 1589, for example, the bloody Battle of Arques took place there between Henry IV of France and the troops of the Catholic League.2
For other drawings of the Château d’Arc see Tate D20211, D35854; Turner Bequest CCXX E, CCCLXIV 17. See also Turner’s watercolour of the Château d’Arc produced for Scott’s Prose Works of c.1834–6, housed at Eton College, Library and reproduced in Tate impression T04762.3 There are also drawings of the castle at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.4

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2014

1
‘Le Château d’Arques-la-Bataille’, Normandie Héritage, accessed 3 November 2014, http://www.normandie-heritage.com/spip.php?article734
2
Ibid.
3
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.434 no.1132.
4
Wilton 1979, p.347 nos.421–2, p.436 no.1147.

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