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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > The Second Meuse-Moselle Tour 1839 > Spa, Dinant and Namur Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Namur from the Liège Road; The Quayside next to the Town Hall at Dinant, Looking Downstream with Figures Loading a Cart 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Namur from the Liège Road; The Quayside next to the Town Hall at Dinant, Looking Downstream with Figures Loading a Cart’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 44 Verso:
Namur from the Liège Road; The Quayside next to the Town Hall at Dinant, Looking Downstream with Figures Loading a Cart 1839
D28125
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 44 a
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 94 x 154 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘?Mason’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The principal drawing is of Namur taken from the road leading to Liège. The citadel crowning the city heights, the rampe-verte, and the Pont de Jambes traversing the Meuse can be seen as well as the Church of Saint-Loup de Namur and the dome of Saint-Aubin Cathedral at the right. For similar views of Namur in this sketchbook see Tate D28123, D28126–D28127; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 43, 45–45a. See also the Brussels up to Mannheim-Rhine sketchbook of 1833 (Tate D29621, Turner Bequest CCXCVII 13).
Inversely orientated to the drawing of Namur is a rough jotting of Dinant taken from the quayside next to the Town Hall. The Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame can be seen at right and the bridge facing it. Figures at the quayside load their wares onto small carts. Turner has inscribed what appears to be the word ‘Mason’ beneath them, perhaps indicating that the men at the river’s edge load blocks of stone into their carts.

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Namur from the Liège Road; The Quayside next to the Town Hall at Dinant, Looking Downstream with Figures Loading a Cart 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-namur-from-the-liege-road-the-quayside-next-to-the-town-hall-r1150399, accessed 26 April 2024.