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 Citadel, Church and Bridge at Huy, Looking Upstream to the Hills Beyond 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Citadel, Church and Bridge at Huy, Looking Upstream to the Hills Beyond’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
The Citadel, Church and Bridge at Huy, Looking Upstream to the Hills Beyond 1824
D20090
Turner Bequest CCXVII 4
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 99 x 162 mm
Watermark ‘[...]lls | 1[...]’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Clothes’ bottom left
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘4’ top right and ‘247’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVII–4’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This wide-angle view, continued onto the folio opposite and on folio 5 recto (Tate D20089, D20091; Turner Bequest CCXVII 3a, 5), shows the Belgian town of Huy from a slightly different angle from Tate D20088; Turner Bequest CCXVII 3. The perpendicular walls of the citadel built into sheer granite cliffs are pictured to full effect here. The fortification looms over Huy and stands in stark contrast to the medieval campanile of the church and vernacular architecture of the narrow streets below. In the foreground Turner makes a swift record of boatmen at the banks of the Meuse, preparing their vessels for a journey or having recently returned from one. Turner’s inscription ‘Clothes’ at bottom left may indicate the content of their cargo. At the far left of the stone bridge, at right angles to it, is the Pont Saint-Nicholas, a single arched bridge which crosses one of the tributaries of the Meuse, the Houyoux, from which the town takes its name.1
1
Powell 1991, p.123 no.38.
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 Citadel, Church and Bridge at Huy, Looking Upstream to the Hills Beyond 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-citadel-church-and-bridge-at-huy-looking-upstream-to-the-r1174285, accessed 23 November 2024.