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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Boat or Boats, Probably on the River Meuse at Liège, with Women Rinsing Dyed Wool 1825

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 165 Verso:
A Boat or Boats, Probably on the River Meuse at Liège, with Women Rinsing Dyed Wool 1825
D19167
Turner Bequest CCXIV 165a
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘For washing out the dye the wool is Packed in the Basket | of [diagrammatic sketch] frame work’ towards bottom
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. Most of the topographical sketches between folios 162 verso and 168 verso (D19161–D19173), were made down the River Meuse along the southern end of central Liège, and this boat (or boats) was likely observed at this stage. For other views of Liège in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 155 verso (D19147).
It is unclear whether the frameworks and canopies are on the boat(s) or the bank; if the former, compare the more substantial traditional bateau-lavoir barges on the Seine in Paris. According to Turner’s careful inscription, the figures within, likely all women, are engaged in rinsing dyed wool in a loosely woven basket or frame. The Low Countries have been renowned for woollen textile production since medieval times.1 In a discussion of ‘Turner and the Industrial Scene’, the Marxist writer Jack Lindsay noted this page among ‘examples of his eye for labour process from the sketchbooks’;2 see this sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many shipping and figure subjects, and studies of individuals, their costume and headgear.

Matthew Imms and Quirine van der Meer Mohr
September 2020

1
There is a Centre Touristique de la Laine et de la Mode at nearby Verviers: ‘The Tourist Centre for Wool and Fashion’, Aqualaine, accessed 14 July 2020, https://www.aqualaine.be/en/the-tourist-centre-for-wool-and-fashion/.
2
Lindsay 1966, p.255.

How to cite

Matthew Imms and Quirine van der Meer Mohr, ‘A Boat or Boats, Probably on the River Meuse at Liège, with Women Rinsing Dyed Wool 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2020, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-boat-or-boats-probably-on-the-river-meuse-at-liege-with-r1202519, accessed 04 April 2026.