Joseph Mallord William Turner

This drawing depicts Trarbach from the Grevenburg, a castle situated, as Michael Joseph Quin writes, ‘high in the heavens, upon an abrupt ridge of rocks’.1 The towers, which point vertically towards the expansive sky, belong to the Trarbach’s network of fortified walls: ‘there are three gates’, writes Quin, ‘in good preservation, surmounted by towers, which add much to the chivalrous aspect of the place’.2

As Cecilia Powell notes, the work shares a similar colour palette to Tate D20240; Turner Bequest CCXXII G, but ‘is executed in a far denser way with gouache predominating throughout’.3 The pale apricot, dusty rose and orange pigments used to render the town are almost milky in their opacity, creating a bold tonal contrast between Trarbach and the distant mountain peaks of blue and mauve wash.

The artist recorded this prospect in the fourth of the five 1839 sketchbooks, on Tate D28400; Turner Bequest CCXC 25a. This view is taken from the opposite angle to three other Trarbach gouaches: see Tate D20240, D20259, D20275; Turner Bequest CCXXI G, Z, CCXXII P.

Verso:

Inscribed in pencil ‘101’ at centre and ’24?l’ centre right.