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

These slight sketches show a town on the Meuse, and were probably taken as Turner travelled from Liège to Huy. A large eighteenth-century Mosan style building with dormer windows overlooks the river whilst boats with tall masts sail by. Across the river a church can be seen amongst trees and vegetation and beyond it, two towers topped with conical roofs. The same town is shown from the opposite perspective in the uppermost sketch.

There is a possibility that Turner’s inscriptions ‘ove[...]’ and ‘ouvre’ refer to ‘Ougrée’, a village now incorporated into the town of Seraing located just west of Liège and across the river from Tilleur (the village shown on the opposite folio: Tate D19606; Turner Bequest CCXVI 28).