Joseph Mallord William Turner

Wellmich and Burg Maus, Looking Upstream

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
D28512
Turner Bequest CCXC 80 a

Catalogue entry

This swiftly rendered sketch depicts the Burg Maus (Mouse Castle) above the village of Wellmich (now part of Sankt Goarshausen) on the east bank of the Rhine. Maus is located north of Burg Katz (Cat Castle) and Burg Rheinfels (see Tate D28455; Turner Bequest CCXC 53).
The Maus belonged to the electors of Trier and was constructed in the fourteenth century to enforce that city’s recently acquired Rhine toll rights and to secure its territories against the Counts of Katzenelnbogen who owned the castles Rheinfels and Katz.1

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

1
‘Burg Maus’, Welterbe Oberes Mittelrheintal, http://www.welterbe-mittelrheintal.de/index.php?id=104, accessed 23 July 2013.

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