Joseph Mallord William Turner

The Confluence of the Meuse and the Sambre at Namur: Upper Sketch Looking up the Meuse; Lower Sketch Looking up the Sambre

1839

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Spa, Dinant and Namur Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 94 × 154 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D28119
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 41

Catalogue entry

With the sketchbook orientated horizontally, Turner has produced two linear profiles of the confluence of the Meuse and Sambre rivers at Namur, each running parallel to the other. The artist took the upper sketch looking up the Meuse, the citadel atop the heights in the background. The lower sketch looks up the Sambre, a tributary of the Meuse. Turner’s gouache, pen and ink and watercolour drawing on blue paper, The Confluence at Namur: Moonlight (Tate D24716; Turner Bequest CCLIX 151), is based on elements of both sketches.
For other views of Namur in this sketchbook see Tate D28042, D28065, D28069, D28118, D28120–D28121, D28123, D28125–D28127, D28151 – D28152; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 1, 12a, 14a, 40a, 41a–42, 43, 44a, 45a, 58a–59. See also the earlier Huy and Dinant sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D20104–D20106; Turner Bequest CCXVII 12a–14 and the 1833 Brussels up to Mannheim-Rhine sketchbook (Tate D29645, D29647, D29751; Turner Bequest CCXCVI 25, 26, 79a).

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2013

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right