Joseph Mallord William Turner

Here Turner depicts the Burg Metternich near Beilstein on the Moselle (see Tate D19787 Turner Bequest CCXVI 118a). With the sketchbook turned horizontally, the artist has also recorded a series of diminutive views of Cochem in Germany. These are rendered with agile, nimble line. Swiftly executed, they show the city’s waterfront with a boat moored at the banks of the Moselle; a view of the river with the Peterskapelle; and a wider prospect of Cochem with St Martin’s Church and the Reichsburg atop the ridge. The Peterskapelle, a tiny chapel teetering precariously on a cliff at right in the central sketch, is also known by another name: the Pestkapelle St Rochus. The chapel was constructed when Cochem was in the midst of a devastating outbreak of plague (‘Pest’ in German), and thus it was to Saint Roch, the saint invoked in times of pestilence, that the building was dedicated.

For further depictions of Cochem in this sketchbook see Tate D19793–D19796; Turner Bequest CCXVI 121a–123. For later views, see Tate D28318–D28319, D28318–D28319, D28358–D28363, D28540–D28549; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 3–3a, 14a–15, CCXC 4a–7, CCXCI 2–7. See also Turner’s watercolour and gouache drawings of the town on Tate D20238, D20253, D24723, D24725, D24806, D28948, D28950, D28963, D28974, D28986, D28987, D28992, D29000, D29020; Turner Bequest CCXXI E, T, CCLIX 158, 160, 241, CCXCII 1, 3, 16, 27, 39, 40, 45, 51, 69.

Technical notes:

There is a small tear of about half an inch in length at top centre of the page.