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 ... > Trèves and Rhine Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Moselle from the Hillside at Pallien, Looking Upstream with the Roman Bridge in the Distance and Trier Hidden behind the Trees on the Left 1824

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Moselle from the Hillside at Pallien, Looking Upstream with the Roman Bridge in the Distance and Trier Hidden behind the Trees on the Left’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 10 Recto:
The Moselle from the Hillside at Pallien, Looking Upstream with the Roman Bridge in the Distance and Trier Hidden behind the Trees on the Left 1824
D20148
Turner Bequest CCXVIII 10
Pencil, watercolour, gouache and chalk on white wove paper, 220 x 291 mm
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘10’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCXVIII–10’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a similar view of Trier to Tate D20146; Turner Bequest CCXVIII 8, but here Turner has sketched from further downstream on the banks of the Moselle at Pallien. The artist was clearly moved by the scene before him to create such a dynamic drawing: vigorous and textural in handling and richly chromatic. Verdant trees and tangled shrubbery frame a view of the ancient Römerbrücke, the vegetation rendered with fern, dark olive, umber and rust pigments in immediate, gestural brush-strokes. A vast sky streaked with fast-moving cirrus completes the view, a compliment to the textured greenery below and a further embodiment of nature’s vitality.
Turner drew similar scenes of Trier from Pallien in this sketchbook on Tate D20149, D20151; Turner Bequest CCXVIII 11, 13. See also the Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D19729, D19733–D19738; Turner Bequest CCXVI 90a, 92a–95) and the later watercolour and gouache drawing of 1839 (Tate D24715; Turner Bequest CCLIX 150).
Verso:
Blank

Alice Rylance-Watson
December 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Moselle from the Hillside at Pallien, Looking Upstream with the Roman Bridge in the Distance and Trier Hidden behind the Trees on the Left 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2013, 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-moselle-from-the-hillside-at-pallien-looking-upstream-r1174887, accessed 18 April 2024.