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 Dinant, Looking Downstream from the Hillside, South of the Town, with Bouvignes and the Castle of Crèvecoeur Seen in the Distance 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dinant, Looking Downstream from the Hillside, South of the Town, with Bouvignes and the Castle of Crèvecoeur Seen in the Distance’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 27 Verso:
Dinant, Looking Downstream from the Hillside, South of the Town, with Bouvignes and the Castle of Crèvecoeur Seen in the Distance 1839
D28094
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 27 a
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 94 x 154 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This detailed sketch rendered in fine and deliberate line formed the basis of a gouache, pen and ink and watercolour on blue paper study of Dinant from the hillside outside the town walls (Tate D20227; Turner Bequest CCXX T). The eleventh–century citadel, built to defend the Meuse valley and later rebuilt in 1820 during the Dutch occupation, can be seen at the right and, beneath it, the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame, conspicuous by its celebrated onion dome and lantern.
For other views of Dinant in this sketchbook see Tate D28122, D28125, D28142, D28147, D28153, D28155–D28158, D28160–D28166, D41091; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 42a, 44a, 53, 56a, 59a, 60a–62a, 63a–66a. There are also further colour sketches of the town produced in gouache on blue paper between 1834–9, some with pen and ink and watercolour added (Tate D20228, D24724, D28984; Turner Bequest CCXX U; CCLIX 159, CCXCII 37). There is also a colour sketch dating between 1825 and 1834 in the Laing Art Gallery at Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Tyne and Wear Museums) and at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.1
For earlier views of Dinant see the Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D19556–D19663; Turner Bequest CCXVI 53a–57) and the Huy and Dinant sketchbook of the same year (Tate D20109–D20113; Turner Bequest CCXVII 16–19).

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.421, nos.1026–7 respectively.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Dinant, Looking Downstream from the Hillside, South of the Town, with Bouvignes and the Castle of Crèvecoeur Seen in the Distance 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-dinant-looking-downstream-from-the-hillside-south-of-the-r1150368, accessed 25 April 2024.