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

In this swiftly rendered sketch Turner depicts Givet drawn upstream from the bridge, incorporating the Tour Victoire, the fortress of Charlemont atop the city heights, and the seventeenth-century Church of Saint-Hilaire at the right. In the foreground the artist has suggested river boatmen with their craft.

This sketch and that on folio 6 recto (Tate D28177; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 6) relate to an important and previously unknown gouache of Givet which was discovered at a Sotheby’s sale on 4 December 2008. It is entitled Givet on the Meuse, South of Dinant. Only three 1839 gouaches had hitherto been associated with French towns: a distant view of Givet from the north in a private collection, a view of Mézières (Tate D24731; Turner Bequest CCLIX 166 and a view of Sedan (Tate D24578; Turner Bequest CCLIX 13). This discovery, then, marked a significant addition to this small collection of French subjects and, as Cecilia Powell notes, ‘gives one reason to hope that further scenes in this series will come to light’.1