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

Both Finberg and Cecilia Powell catalogue this sketch as showing ‘Views on’, ‘by’, or ‘near’ the Meuse. This cataloguer is able to identify that the central view, depicting a large house with striking bell-shaped twin spires, is the Château des Comtes de Bryas at Fumay in the French Ardennes. Constructed for the noble family of Bryas between the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, the house was constructed with local Mosan blue stone and slate.1 Turner depicts the chateau as it stands today, overlooking a picturesque horseshoe meander of the Meuse.

The Baroque clock tower with tall lantern to the immediate top right of Bryas Chateau is the same as that shown at a distance in the uppermost sketch. This may have once belonged to the Church of Saint-Georges, before it was renovated in the neo-Gothic architectural style in the late nineteenth century. The tower appears again in sketch of 1839: Tate D28189; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 12.