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

Here Turner has lightly sketched a distant view of the Walloon city of Liège, incorporating the chimneys of a local factory to the right and a suggestion of some buildings at the left. The serpentine, bisecting trajectory of the Meuse River is visible at the centre. As with the sketch on the previous folio (Tate D28073; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 16a), this work forms the basis of a gouache and watercolour drawing on blue paper (Tate D20283; Turner Bequest CCXXII X). The city was an important industrial hub, a centre of regional cloth making and ironmongery.1

For other drawings of Liège in this sketchbook see the following folios: Tate D28066, D28068, D28070–D28073, D28076; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 13, 14, 15–16a, 18. For Turner’s earlier views of the city see the Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D19598, D19636–D19638, D20061–D20064; Turner Bequest CCXVI 24, 43a–44a, 260a–262); the Huy and Dinant sketchbook of the same date (Tate D20084, D20095–D20103; Turner Bequest CCXVII 1, 8–12); the Holland, Meuse and Cologne sketchbook of 1825 (Tate D19446–D19447, D19520–D19521; Turner Bequest CCXV 25a–26, 71a–72); and the Holland Sketchbook of the same date (Tate D19160; Turner Bequest CCXIV 162). There are also drawings of Liège in the 1833 Brussels up to Mannheim–Rhine sketchbook (Tate D29669–D29670, D29673; Turner Bequest CCXCVI 37a–38, 39a).