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 The Sauvenière Spring, Spa 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Sauvenière Spring, Spa’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Recto:
The Sauvenière Spring, Spa 1839
D28084
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 22
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 94 x 154 mm
Watermarked ‘[F]ellows’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Savon’ bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘350’ bottom right and ‘22’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXXVII–22’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Sauvenière spring is located in woodland approximately two miles east of Spa. The site was presided over by ‘a substantial three-storeyed house’, the Turner scholar Cecilia Powell writes, which was ‘linked to the Sauvenière spring by an arcade similar to that found at Géronstère’ (Tate D28079; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 19 a, for example).1 In this sketch Turner has mapped out the landscape roughly with loose pencil markings: vertical strokes of the pencil representing trees which line a path in front of the Sauvenière house. The artist has inscribed ‘Savon’, an abbreviation of Sauvenière, at the bottom right of the sheet.
Sauvenière and Groesbeck, a spring just a few yards away, are depicted on the verso of this sheet (Tate D28084; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 22a). The present sketch formed the basis for a gouache, pen and ink and watercolour drawing on blue paper (Tate D24780; Turner Bequest CCLIX 215).

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2013

1
Powell 1991, p.171, no.117 reproduced.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Sauvenière Spring, Spa 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-the-sauveniere-spring-spa-r1150358, accessed 19 September 2024.