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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and French ... > Holland Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Watermills on the Outremeuse Bank of the River Meuse at Liège, with the Pont des Arches in the Distance below the Citadel 1825

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Watermills on the Outremeuse Bank of the River Meuse at Liège, with the Pont des Arches in the Distance below the Citadel’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 166 Verso:
Watermills on the Outremeuse Bank of the River Meuse at Liège, with the Pont des Arches in the Distance below the Citadel 1825
D19169
Turner Bequest CCXIV 166a
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘18’ towards top right, above building
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. The sketches between folios 162 verso and 168 verso (D19161–D19173, except folio 164 verso, D19165, a stray view of Cologne), were made down a mile or so of the River Meuse as it wound north-eastwards along the southern end of central Liège.
The view here is to the north-east, with the Pont des Arches on the left, the Citadel on the skyline, and the distant twin spires of St-Barthélemy’s Church (Saint Bartholomew’s) at the centre below. The Outremeuse bank in the right foreground, since developed out of recognition, include watermills and an imposing building with a turret, possibly part of the lost Convent of the Recollectines en Béche as shown on maps of the time; the elevation towards the top right is a continuation the near side, to the right of the turret.
As shown in an engraving of 1819, it stood just downstream from the Tour en Bêche (seen on the recto; D19168);1 it is shown from here and another angle in the contemporary Holland, Meuse and Cologne sketchbook (Tate D19448–D19449; Turner Bequest CCXV 26a, 27) and again, near the new Pont de la Boverie (on the site of today’s Pont J.F. Kennedy), in the 1839 Spa, Dinant and Namur book (D28068; CCLXXXVI 14).
In the foreground is a fishing boat with a crane-like boom supporting the frame of a lever or lift net; see also the recto (D19168), and under folio 80 verso (D18998) for other such craft in this sketchbook. The same boat is lightly indicated in the first of the Holland, Meuse and Cologne drawings (D19448). For other views of Liège here and elsewhere, see under folio 155 verso (D19147).

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
Imaged as ‘1819 – Bethune – La tour en Beche emportée par les pluies’ at Hippolyte Guillery, ‘La Meuse et la Légia à Liège: La Meuse – Etudes faites par ordre du gouvernement belge’ , Château de Chokier, accessed 21 July 2020, http://www.chokier.com/FILES/ EAUX/Meuse-Rapport1839-Guillery.html.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Watermills on the Outremeuse Bank of the River Meuse at Liège, with the Pont des Arches in the Distance below the Citadel 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2020, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-watermills-on-the-outremeuse-bank-of-the-river-meuse-at-r1202521, accessed 13 December 2025.