Joseph Mallord William Turner Namur from the Fields c.1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Namur from the Fields c.1839
D24711
Turner Bequest CCLIX 146
Turner Bequest CCLIX 146
Gouache, pen and ink and watercolour on blue wove paper, 141 x 192 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX–146’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX–146’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1904
National Gallery, London, various dates to at least 1904 (384, as ‘Namur’).
1970
Turner: Watercolours Lent by the British Museum, Musée Provisoire d’Art Moderne, Brussels, November 1970–January 1971 (63).
1977
Turner Watercolors: An Exhibition of Works Loaned by The Trustees of the British Museum, International Exhibitions Foundation tour, Cleveland Museum of Art, September–November 1977, Detroit Institute of Arts, December 1977–February 1978, Philadelphia Museum of Art, March–April 1978 (42, reproduced as Namur, with the Fortress Seen from Across the River).
1983
J.M.W. Turner: Dibujos y acuarelas del Museo Británico, exhibition catalogue, Museo del Prado, Madrid, February–March 1983 (62, reproduced).
1984
J.M.W. Turner in Luxembourg and its neighbourhood, Musée de l’Etat, Luxembourg, March–April 1984 (31, as Vue de Namur: la citadelle surplombant la ville).
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 (93, reproduced, and in colour [p.83]).
2001
La Meuse, de Turner à Delvaux, Maison de la Culture, Namur, September–October 2001 (60, reproduced in colour, p.[17] and covers).
References
1904
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn eds., Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, p.626 no.384, as ‘Namur’.
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.797, as ‘Namur’.
1977
Andrew Wilton, Turner Watercolors: An Exhibition of Works Loaned by The Trustees of the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, Cleveland Museum of Art 1977, pp.15, 61 no.42, 62 no.43.
1991
Cecilia Powell, Turner’s Rivers of Europe: The Rhine, Meuse and Mosel, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1991, pp.18, 54, 158 no.93.
Turner’s vantage point here is the shrub-dotted fields surrounding the Liège road on the outskirts of Namur. Wall-girdled, the spires, domes and towers of Namur’s architecture are suggested in abbreviated and summary pen and ink line. ‘Like all places hemmed in by walls’, the publisher William Chambers writes, Namur ‘consists of crooked and narrow streets, environed with tall old houses’.1 It is presided over by a citadel, ‘a series of loop-holed battlements over looking the town, and commanding both the vales of the Sambre and Meuse’.2 The citadel, in this drawing, is made conspicuous by Turner’s application of coral and pale lemon gouache highlights. As Andrew Wilton writes, Namur fortress is typical of the military architecture found in ‘the border land between France, Germany and the Low Countries’.3 These:
elaborate piles of masonry with vast unarticulated walls and interconnecting galleries were for Turner fantastic places that seemed to rise organically out of the rock... In his studies they are nearly always presented as quasi-natural phenomena, without commentary on their military function which so often occurs in other contexts...4
In comparison with another view of Namur from the Liège road (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), this gouache is comprised of a more muted palette: mossy greens, bronze and ‘twilight lavender’.5 The composition derives from a pencil sketch in the Spa, Dinant, and Namur sketchbook (Tate D28123; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 43). For other of Turner’s 1839 gouaches of Namur see Tate D24716; Turner Bequest CCLIX 151 which is also based on a pencil drawing in the same sketchbook (Tate D28119; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 41).
Verso:
Stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCLIX–146’ at centre towards bottom; inscribed in pencil ‘23a’ at top towards left and ‘CCLIX 146’ at bottom right.
Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2013
How to cite
Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Namur from the Fields 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