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 Boats, with Houses Beyond ?at or near Bruges 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Boats, with Houses Beyond ?at or near Bruges’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 175 Verso:
Boats, with Houses Beyond ?at or near Bruges 1824
D19890
Turner Bequest CCXVI 169 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 78 x 118 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Yellow’ | ‘[?Sky] all [?white] | [...]’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These rough and swiftly executed sketches show two river landscapes: the uppermost with boats sailing close to a small harbour with windmills, cylindrical towers with conical spires, and a church with a narrowly tapering steeple. The same architecture is depicted at a distance on Tate D19892; Turner Bequest CCXVI 170 a.
The lowermost sketch appears to show boats on open water, with a stormy sky beyond. There is a final view, diminutive in scale and squared off at bottom left, showing the meander of a river in a flat rural landscape. The absence of clearly identifiable features makes it difficult to be exact about the location, but it is likely that Turner pictures a river in Flanders, perhaps near Bruges.

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Boats, with Houses Beyond ?at or near Bruges 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-boats-with-houses-beyond-at-or-near-bruges-r1174685, accessed 18 September 2024.