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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > The Second Meuse-Moselle Tour 1839 > Givet, Mézières, Verdun, Metz, Luxemburg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Fort Charlemont, Saint-Hilaire and the Bridge at Givet, Looking Upstream 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fort Charlemont, Saint-Hilaire and the Bridge at Givet, Looking Upstream’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Recto:
Fort Charlemont, Saint-Hilaire and the Bridge at Givet, Looking Upstream 1839
D28177
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 6
Pencil on cream laid writing paper, 101 x 168 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘6’ bottom right
Stamped in black ink ‘CCLXXXVIII–6’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch and that on folio 5 verso (Tate D28176; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 5a) relate to an important and previously unknown gouache of Givet which was discovered at a Sotheby’s sale on 4 December 2008.1
Roughly rendered with loose and abbreviated line, this sketch was taken by Turner looking upstream from close to the arched bridge. The artist has drawn the fortress of Charlemont atop the heights in basic outline with the neighbouring Church of Saint-Hilaire to the right. Turner uses ‘bold loops’ and ‘hatched lines’ to indicate trees on the left and a ‘succession of swift curves’ to suggest beached boats on the riverbank.2 As Cecilia Powell writes, the ‘couple of huge scribbled lines in the sky’ almost certainly represent effects of light or clouds or, possibly, Turner employed them to demarcate ‘a noteworthy change in the colouring of the sky’.3

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2013

1
Powell 2008, p.20.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Fort Charlemont, Saint-Hilaire and the Bridge at Givet, Looking Upstream 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-fort-charlemont-saint-hilaire-and-the-bridge-at-givet-r1150454, accessed 21 November 2024.