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 > Meuse-Moselle Gouache and Watercolour ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Cliffs and Cornfields by the Meuse with Poilvache in the Distance c.1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Cliffs and Cornfields by the Meuse with Poilvache in the Distance’ c.1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Cliffs and Cornfields by the Meuse with Poilvache in the Distance c.1839
D20286
Turner Bequest CCXXIII A
Gouache and watercolour on blue wove paper, 141 x 188 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXIII–A’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner pictures the Meuse’s calm waters in Belgium’s Namur Province, with golden yellow cornfields at right. A riverboat sails the placid river at left, the vessel plunged into dark green shadow by a wall of blackened limestone cliff. Poilvache Castle, a medieval stronghold in ruins, is just visible in the distance.
The English journalist and novelist Dudley Costello (1803–1865) visited Poilvache during his tour of the Meuse region in the mid-1840s. He writes that the ruined castle sits within
ten acres of ground or more. It is very much overgrown with shrubs, wild cherry, dwarf oak, hazel, and barberry, and the turf is one carpet of wild thyme filled with bees... The view of the country from the battlements of Poilvache is most magnificent, and the course of the Meuse can be traced for several miles.1
This gouache is derived from a cursory pencil sketch in the Spa, Dinant, and Namur sketchbook of c.1839 (Tate D28159; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 63). Earlier sketches of Poilvache can be found in the Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D19652–D19653; Turner Bequest CCXVI 51a–52).
1
Dudley Costello, A tour through the valley of the Meuse: with the legends of the Walloon country and the Ardennes, 2nd ed., London 1846,pp.255–6.
Verso:
Stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCXXIII A’ at bottom right.

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Cliffs and Cornfields by the Meuse with Poilvache in the Distance c.1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-cliffs-and-cornfields-by-the-meuse-with-poilvache-in-the-r1150985, accessed 20 September 2024.