With the sketchbook turned upside down relative to the foliation Turner has drawn three separate sketches of the citadel at Huy, a town on the banks of the Meuse in the province of Liege, Belgium. On passing through Huy on his 1841 tour of Switzerland, the Scottish publisher William Chambers observed that the town was:
stuck awkwardly on the face of [a] hill, the summit of which is crowned with a fortification, apparently of immense strength, and commanding, with rows of bristling cannon, the passage up and down the Meuse. Part of the town is on the low ground on the left bank, the two divisions being connected by a long stone bridge which the steamer barely clears its way.
1Some but not all of these sights feature in the present sketch: on the upper register Turner has summarily outlined the tower of the Gothic Church of Notre-Dame, colloquially known as
Li Rondia in the Huy dialect.
2 Behind it is the profile of the fortress or citadel of Huy built by the Dutch in 1818 and known by locals as
Li Tchestia. Beneath it, running across the middle register, is a further view of the citadel.
3Turner has sketched a number of isolated architectural features within and around the profile of the fortress including a spire with lantern-shaped crown to the right and a spandrel to the bottom left. At the bottom register there is a summary sketch of what appear to be vaulted arches and a rough delineation of a figure. The top of a spire from the opposite folio (Tate
D28044; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 2) has continued onto this sheet.
For other views of Huy in this sketchbook see Tate
D28048,
D28053,
D28057,
D28067,
D28096,
D28131–D28137,
D28139–D28143,
D28147,
D28149; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 4, 6a, 8a, 13a, 28a, 47a–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).
Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2013
