Joseph Mallord William Turner

This carefully rendered view shows the Meuse valley at the village of Flône (Amay) near Liège. The foreground is occupied with a cluster of boats and barges crossing the placid waters of the Meuse which winds and meanders into the distance. The architecture at centre left is Flône Abbey: a medieval and once ‘important monastery of Augustines, the abbots of which formerly owned the greater part of the coal and lead mines which abound in this district’, the English journalist and author Dudley Costello writes.1 In this drawing the seventeenth-century junction tower is most prominent, a feature described by Costello as a ‘compact brick building, having an air of more comfort than beauty’.2

For more drawings of the Abbey at Flône see Tate D19620, D19642, D28148; Turner Bequest CCXVI 35, 46a, CCLXXXVII 57.

Technical notes:

The paper has mottled and browned significantly, a result of the drawing’s prolonged exhibition and exposure to sunlight during the nineteenth century.