Joseph Mallord William Turner

Mainz, Looking Downstream from its Eastern Outskirts

1839

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 100 × 163 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D28488
Turner Bequest CCXC 69 a

Catalogue entry

This slight sketch of Mainz was taken from the east of the city, looking down the Rhine. It incorporates St Martin’s Cathedral and Church of St Stephan as well as some of the gate towers of Mainz which have stood since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Turner’s inscription ‘Nass’ may refer to the ancient House of Nassau whose Counts controlled Wiesbaden, Idstein, and Weilburg. The note ‘Flu’ may correspond to the inscription on the folio 70 recto (Tate D28489; Turner Bequest CCXC 70) which reads ‘Flusbad’ (‘Flussbad’, i.e. ‘river pool’); ‘Harb’ is possibly a shortening of ‘harbour’.

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

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