Joseph Mallord William Turner

The village of Pallien, seen here at right, is ‘nestled most picturesquely’, Bartholomew Stritch writes, ‘at the foot of an enormous rock at the entrance of a deep valley’.1 A trip across the Moselle to Pallien was a detour recommended by almost all contemporary guidebooks, affording visitors an excellent vantage point from which to view, and Turner to sketch, the city of Trier. The beauty of Pallien also clearly merited recording, as it is shown here in delicate pencil line and fine chalk highlights.

A bridge at the river’s edge is seen reflected in the waters, and directly above it, just to the right of the Church of Saints Simon and Jude straddling two cliffs, is another bridge, the Napoleonsbrücke. Constructed by the French Emperor to link Trier to Aachen, the bridge is seen more clearly in Tate D20146; Turner Bequest CCXVIII 8 and in a gouache and watercolour drawing of 1839 (Tate D24741; Turner Bequest CCLIX 176). The Church of Saints Simon and Jude, noted for its striking onion cupola, is shown at a closer proximity in the 1824 Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook (Tate D19727, D19730; Turner Bequest CCXVI 89a, 91). These views are similar to a lithograph by J.A. Ramboux (1790–1866), depicting the church and valley from the Napoleonsbrücke (Art Institute Chicago, Illinois).2

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