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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Brussels up to Mannheim - Rhine ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bruges: The Grand Place Looking towards the Government Buildings, Belfry and Notre Dame; Bruges: The Hôtel de Ville and Chapel of the Holy Blood from the Place du Bourg 1833

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bruges: The Grand Place Looking towards the Government Buildings, Belfry and Notre Dame; Bruges: The Hôtel de Ville and Chapel of the Holy Blood from the Place du Bourg’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 9 Verso:
Bruges: The Grand Place Looking towards the Government Buildings, Belfry and Notre Dame; Bruges: The Hôtel de Ville and Chapel of the Holy Blood from the Place du Bourg 1833
D29612
Turner Bequest CCXCVI 8 a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 185 x 113 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[...]’, ‘4’, ‘6’, ‘5’ on buildings
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘82’ bottom left (inversely)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The upper sketch shows Bruges’ Markt or Grand Place, looking towards the old Provinciaal Hof (rebuilt in the late 1880s), the Belfry and, in the distance, the Church of Our Lady (Notre Dame or Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk). Below is a second view of Bruges, this time taken from the Burg, the city’s second main square named after a ninth-century fortress built by Baldwin I, first Margrave of Flanders. The Hôtel de Ville or Stadhuis and the Chapel of the Holy Blood are situated there, and are shown in this sketch. Turner has inscribed both drawings with notes, some numerical to record the bays on the Belfry and parts of the Hôtel de Ville.
For other drawings of Bruges see Tate D12705–D12713, D19268, D19272–D19278; Turner Bequest CLX 2v–7a, CCXIV 216, 218–221.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2017

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Bruges: The Grand Place Looking towards the Government Buildings, Belfry and Notre Dame; Bruges: The Hôtel de Ville and Chapel of the Holy Blood from the Place du Bourg 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2017, 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-bruges-the-grand-place-looking-towards-the-government-r1202910, accessed 15 January 2025.