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 Views of a Fortress Town 1824

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Views of a Fortress Town’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 65 Recto:
Views of a Fortress Town 1824
D19679
Turner Bequest CCXVI 65
Pencil on white wove paper, 78 x 118 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Cuyp’ top right ascending
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘65’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–65’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
An arched bridge leading towards the entranceway of an unidentified town is the subject of the principal sketch. There are also two small squared-off views: at top left is a town shown from a distance during a rainstorm and the other, at bottom right, annotated ‘Cuyp’, shows a river flowing towards a fortified town with figures walking at its banks. The inscription ‘Cuyp’ refers to Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691), a Dutch ‘Golden Age’ landscape artist. Turner may have found the landscape before him reminiscent of a Cuyp tableau, just as he had found an earlier landscape in northern France evocative of paintings by his contemporary and friend A.W. Callcott (Tate D19588; Turner Bequest CCXVI 19).

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Views of a Fortress Town 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-views-of-a-fortress-town-r1174467, accessed 25 April 2024.