J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Brussels, with the Cathedral of Saint Michael and Saint Gudula 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Brussels, with the Cathedral of Saint Michael and Saint Gudula’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 272 Verso:
Brussels, with the Cathedral of Saint Michael and Saint Gudula 1824
D20071
Turner Bequest CCXVI 265 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 78 x 118 mm
Watermark ‘[smith &] allnut | [18]22’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This previously unidentified sketch shows the Belgian city of Brussels, where Turner stayed on 12 August 1824, at the very beginning of his tour, and on 5 September, towards the end of it. The artist has sketched this view from what appears to be a building site or sandpit: in the foreground workers with horse-drawn carts toil on an uneven slope of land full of rubble. The prospect beyond includes a number of the city’s celebrated ecclesiastical and civic monuments, such as the towering Gothic Cathedral of Saint Michel and Saint Gudula at centre. See also Tate D20067–D20070, D20072; Turner Bequest CCXVI 263a–265, 266.

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Brussels, with the Cathedral of Saint Michael and Saint Gudula 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-brussels-with-the-cathedral-of-saint-michael-and-saint-r1174866, accessed 13 August 2025.