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 ... > Huy and Dinant Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Western Half of the Bridge at Huy, Looking Upstream to the Maison de Batta; View along the Roman Bridge at Trier to the City Walls and Spires 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Western Half of the Bridge at Huy, Looking Upstream to the Maison de Batta; View along the Roman Bridge at Trier to the City Walls and Spires’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Recto:
The Western Half of the Bridge at Huy, Looking Upstream to the Maison de Batta; View along the Roman Bridge at Trier to the City Walls and Spires 1824
D20091
Turner Bequest CCXVII 5
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 99 x 162 mm
Watermark ‘[...]lls | 1[...]’
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘5’ top right and ‘247’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVII–5’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The larger of the two drawings is a continuation of the view of Huy from Tate D20090; Turner Bequest CCXVII 4. It shows the western half of the stone bridge crossing the Meuse and beyond, the Maison de Batta, the building furthest from view. Constructed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Batta House was once a refuge for the Cistercian abbey of Val-Saint Lambert. It is depicted in more detail in an engraving by the British artist W.H. Bartlett (1809–1854) published in 1836.1
The drawing which runs parallel to the gutter of the sketchbook is a view of the ancient city of Trier, Germany, taken from the Römerbrücke. Turner draws from outside part of Trier’s medieval city wall, constructed between 1102 and 1248.2 Enclosed within the towered fortification is the cathedral and a number of ecclesiastical buildings, rising loftily above winding streets of half-timbered and stone houses. The Liebfrauenkirche, St Gangolf’s Church, and possibly the Church of St Paulinus are visible. For other views of Trier see Tate D19728, D19729, D19738; Turner Bequest CCXVI 90, 90a, 95.
1
Steel Engraving by A.H. Payne after W.H. Bartlett, ‘Huy–River Meuse’, 1836, Musée Communal de Huy, Belgium.
2
‘Trier Chronicle’, Trier, accessed 10 January 2014, http://www.trier-info.de/english/trier-chronicle
Technical notes:
The paper has mottled and browned significantly, a result of the drawing’s prolonged exhibition and exposure to sunlight during the nineteenth century.
Verso:
Blank

Alice Rylance-Watson
January 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Western Half of the Bridge at Huy, Looking Upstream to the Maison de Batta; View along the Roman Bridge at Trier to the City Walls and Spires 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 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-the-western-half-of-the-bridge-at-huy-looking-upstream-to-r1174286, accessed 23 November 2024.