J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

The prospect is west across the River Rhine to Cologne, from the opposite bank. The viewpoint is in the vicinity of Deutz Abbey, where the bridge of boats then crossed, as seen more clearly in the contemporary Holland sketchbook (Tate D19129; Turner Bequest CCXIV 146a). It is only lightly indicated here, with a few of the pontoons dashed in at the left; the long cabin of the barge shown tethered half-way across on its downstream side also is seen in the other drawing, under which the bridge, on the site of today’s Deutzer Brücke, is discussed. The small striped structure towards the right may be a sentry box at the near end. Figures unload a small boat in the foreground, with a woman carrying a bale away, balanced on her head.

Moving northwards from left to right along the skyline, the Gothic spire of the Rathaus is shown a little away from the river, due west of the Romanesque Great St Martin Church, with its spires and pinnacles. The city’s great Gothic cathedral follows, then unfinished apart from the lower stages of its south-west tower, topped by the crane left by medieval workmen (echoed by one on the riverfront below), and the east end with its radiating flying buttresses. The St Maria Himmelfahrt Church, not far beyond to the north-west, is squeezed in at the edge. There is another panoramic view from a little downstream, directly opposite St Martin’s and extending further north past the cathedral, on folios 66 verso–67 recto (D19510–D19511).

Cecilia Powell has noted that 1825 was the third time, after 1817 and 1824, that Turner visited the city, and the ‘sketches suggest that he deliberately paid careful attention to Cologne, as though compensating for having neglected it in 1824’,1 here and in the Holland sketchbook.2 Of the drawings in the present book, Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll have mentioned this one ‘especially’3 in relation to the large oil painting Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat. Evening, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1826 (Frick Collection, New York),4 although the view there is south down the west bank from near the cathedral, and unrelated compositionally. The painting and its sources are discussed under Tate D19122 (Turner Bequest CCXIV 143) in the Holland book.

Despite nineteenth-century redevelopment, substantial damage during the Second World War and later bridges, features of Cologne’s main river prospects remain recognisable. See under folio 31 verso (D19457) for other views of the city in this sketchbook and elsewhere.

Verso:

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