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

This page contains three separate sketches of the dramatic bluffs, rock formations and ranges surrounding the banks of the Meuse near Namur. The sketches, rendered with rough and swift line, are arranged on the upper, middle and lower registers and orientated in accordance with the foliation. This is with the exception of a small sketch of part of Marche-les-Dames, a town located five miles downstream of Namur, which has been drawn inversely to the rocks on the lower register and which is a continuation of a larger drawing extending onto the upper register of the folio opposite (Tate D28130; Turner Bequest CCLXXVII 47). The delicately rendered view includes the nineteenth-century chateau of the Prince d’Arenberg situated on the riverbank and, adjacent to it, a small church with a spire crowning its tower.1 For a clearer representation of these two buildings see P.J. Goetchebuer’s Château de Marche-les-Dames près de Namur, an engraving from Choix de monuments, edifices et maisons les plus remarquables du royaume des Pays Bas, published in Ghent in 1827.2

These pencil sketches and similar ones on the following folio are the basis for a gouache and watercolour drawing on blue paper of the Rocks on the Meuse at Marche-les-Dames (Tate D20262; Turner Bequest CCXXII C).