Joseph Mallord William Turner Franchimont and the Valley of the Hoëgne c.1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Franchimont and the Valley of the Hoëgne c.1839
D20269
Turner Bequest CCXXII J
Turner Bequest CCXXII J
Gouache, pen and ink and watercolour on blue wove paper, 137 x 190 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXII J’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXII J’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1896
Fifth Loan Collection, National Gallery, London, 1896, Grosvenor Museum, Chester, 1897–9, Corporation Galleries, Glasgow, 1900–2, National Gallery, London, 1903, Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol, 1904–6, National Gallery, London, 1907–8, Liverpool Art Gallery, 1909–10, Aberdeen, 1911, Nottingham Art Gallery, 1912, Grosvenor Museum, Chester, 1913, Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth, February 1914, Blackpool, 1915, Blackburn Art Gallery, 1916–18, Bradford Art Gallery, 1919–20, Burnley, 1921–2, Colne, 1923–4, Rawtenstall, 1925–6, Tate Gallery, London, 1927–30, transferred to the British Museum, London 1931 (no catalogue but numbered 5, as ‘Brantome, France’).
1934
Watercolours from the Turner Bequest [Loan Series A], Municipal Museum, Burton-on-Trent, September–December 1934, Public Museum, Wardown Park, Luton, January–February 1935, Manx Museum, Douglas, Isle of Man, August–November 1936, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, January–March 1937, Historical Rooms, Todmorden, January–March 1938, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, September 1946–February 1947 (no catalogue but numbered 8, as Castle on a Steep Cliff above a narrow valley).
1935
Drawings and Sketches by J.M.W. Turner, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, December 1935–April 1936 (39, as Castle on a steep cliff above a narrow valley).
1939
Aberystwyth, ?November 1939–1939 (no catalogue; 11, as Castle on a Rock).
1939
Grande Saison internationale de l’eau, Liège, May–September 1939 (11, as Castle on a Rock).
1953
J.M.W. Turner R.A. 1775–1851: Pictures from Public and Private Collections in Great Britain, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, February–March 1953 (167, as Castle on a Steep Cliff above a Narrow Valley).
1991
Turner’s Rivers of Europe: The Rhine, Meuse and Mosel, Tate Gallery, London, September 1991–January 1992, Musée Communal d’Ixelles, Brussels, February–April 1992 (111, reproduced in colour [p.89]).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.690, as ‘Castle, with mountain background (? on Moselle)’.
1991
Cecilia Powell, Turner’s Rivers of Europe: The Rhine, Meuse and Mosel, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1991, pp.51, 168 no.111 reproduced.
This gouache is based on two pencil drawings in the Spa, Dinant, and Namur sketchbook of 1839 (Tate D28100–D28101; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 31–31a). Turner took these sketches as he crossed the Hoëgne River at Marché de Theux, Belgium, walking up the hillside to look at the remains of the medieval castle of Franchimont from a closer perspective. The solitary ruin is depicted here on a stormy autumnal afternoon atop a burnt ochre hillside, the sky sombre and heavy with slate-grey cloud. Franchimont Castle dates back to the eleventh century and was constructed for the Principality of Liège. 1 The aristocratic La Marck family then added outer walls, casemates and an artillery tower in the early sixteenth century.2
As Cecilia Powell writes, ‘Among Turner’s five gouaches of Franchimont’ the present drawing ‘is the one which best captures the aspect of the ancient ruin which appealed to the Romantic imagination of the early nineteenth century’.3 The chateau, for example, featured in Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion; A Tale of Flodden Field (1808). Turner had, on a number of occasions, been engaged to produce designs and vignettes for Scott’s published work; perhaps the artist had the poet in mind when he himself drew inspiration from the castle in 1839. See also Tate D20266, D20280, D20289, D24732; Turner Bequest CCXXII J, U, CCXXIII D, CCLIX 167.
Verso:
Stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCXXII–J’ at bottom left; inscribed in pencil ‘6’ at centre towards right; inscribed in pencil ‘CCXXII J’ at bottom right.
Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2013
How to cite
Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Franchimont and the Valley of the Hoëgne c.1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www