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 > Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Four Views near Trarbach: Traben and the Grevenburg, Looking Downstream from the Hillside, plus a Detail of the Grevenburg 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Four Views near Trarbach: Traben and the Grevenburg, Looking Downstream from the Hillside, plus a Detail of the Grevenburg’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Recto:
Four Views near Trarbach: Traben and the Grevenburg, Looking Downstream from the Hillside, plus a Detail of the Grevenburg 1839
D28401
Turner Bequest CCXC 26
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 163 x 100 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘o’ (inverted) bottom right; ‘Light [?S...] Cattle’ (inverted) bottom towards centre left; ‘v’ (inverted) centre right
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘26’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXC–26’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
All taken with the book turned upside down, these slight and agile sketches depict the villages of Traben and Trarbach which lie at opposite sides of the Moselle to each other. The ruins of the Grevenburg Castle can be seen from afar in two of the sketches, Turner inscribing one of them with the annotation ‘Light [...] Cattle’. Both of these sketches continue onto the folio opposite (Tate D28400; Turner Bequest CCXC 25a).
The central sketch depicts a waterside view, with a moored sailing boat and the hills of the Moselle Valley in the background. Turner has marked one of the hills with the letter ‘v’ which most probably stands for the vines which grew bountifully up the river’s banks. The largest drawing is a close-up view of the ruined Grevenburg with a miniscule sketch of Trarbach to its bottom left.

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Four Views near Trarbach: Traben and the Grevenburg, Looking Downstream from the Hillside, plus a Detail of the Grevenburg 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-four-views-near-trarbach-traben-and-the-grevenburg-looking-r1150686, accessed 18 April 2024.