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

This page of six sketches pictures the Meuse at and near Namur. The largest of the drawings, which extends from the upper to middle register, shows Namur citadel on the crest of a ridge overlooking the confluence of the Meuse and Sambre. Above this view is an intriguing inscription in French: ‘Des Chretiens | Le Se C[...] | Soyez vous | Favorable’. The first part of the inscription, ‘Des Chrétiens’, translates as ‘Christians’, but it is the text which follows that proves puzzling. ‘Soyez vous favorable’ directly translates as the instruction: ‘Be favourable to yourself’; this statement also happens to form the first part of the sentence, ‘Soyez vous favorable, cela ne vous arrivera pas’ (‘Be propitious to Thyself, Lord, this shall not be unto thee’) in the French translation of Thomas Aquinas’s Catena Aurea or Golden Chain. ¹ Of course it may well be a coincidence that Turner’s language is, at least in part, identical to the French version of this ancient Patristic commentary on the Gospels, but it also may be that Turner saw this text inscribed somewhere on his journey.

One diminutive view is squared off at far right, annotated with a somewhat scrawled inscription that appears to read either ‘St Mark’ (perhaps referring to the village of Saint-Marc, a commune in the north-east of Namur) or ‘Le Meuse’. The remaining views show picturesque stretches of the river with notes marking out ‘figures landing’, ‘vines’, and where ‘light’ fell on the banks.