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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Bishop's Palace and Cathedral, Verdun, from the Bridge over the Canalised Meuse to the South-West 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Bishop's Palace and Cathedral, Verdun, from the Bridge over the Canalised Meuse to the South-West’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 73 Recto:
The Bishop’s Palace and Cathedral, Verdun, from the Bridge over the Canalised Meuse to the South-West 1824
D19694
Turner Bequest CCXVI 73
Pencil on white wove paper, 78 x 118 mm
Watermark ‘[smith &] allnut | [18]22’
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘73’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–73’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner depicts a view at Verdun in north-eastern France. Shown in this sketch is the grand residence of the Bishops of Verdun, the Palais Episcopal, with the Cathedral of Our Lady adjacent to it. The residence was constructed in 1763 to the designs of Robert de Cotte, chief architect to King Louis XV.1 In 1792 it sustained significant damage during a siege of the city by Revolutionary armies, and suffered further destruction in the 1916 Battle of Verdun.2 Built on a slight ridge, the palace overlooks the streets of city below and the Meuse meanders through it via a series of canals. For further sketches of Verdun, see Tate D19691, D19695–D19698; Turner Bequest CCXVI 71a, 73a–75.

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2014

1
‘Le palais épiscopal’, Tourisme Verdun, accessed 21 April 2014, http://www.tourisme-verdun.fr/palais-episcopal.php
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Bishop’s Palace and Cathedral, Verdun, from the Bridge over the Canalised Meuse to the South-West 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-bishops-palace-and-cathedral-verdun-from-the-bridge-over-r1174483, accessed 16 April 2024.