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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and French ... > Holland, Meuse and Cologne Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Cologne along the River Rhine to the North, from near the St Maria Lyskirchen Church, with Deutz Abbey Opposite; the Bayenturm near St Severin's Basilica, with the Seven Hills upstream in the Distance 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Cologne along the River Rhine to the North, from near the St Maria Lyskirchen Church, with Deutz Abbey Opposite; the Bayenturm near St Severin's Basilica, with the Seven Hills upstream in the Distance’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 34 Verso:
Cologne along the River Rhine to the North, from near the St Maria Lyskirchen Church, with Deutz Abbey Opposite; the Bayenturm near St Severin’s Basilica, with the Seven Hills upstream in the Distance 1825
D19462
Turner Bequest CCXV 34a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Partial watermark ‘Al | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[...ing ?in ... Boat] washing Red Cloth’ centre left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later amended his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Views of Cologne, from river’), adding a question mark.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy in the same way.2 However, the main subject is indeed the city, seen to the north from off the west bank of the Rhine, possibly from the tip of the spit of land along the channel subsequently developed as the Rheinauhafen, off the later Malakoffturm tower. The view continues across the bridge of boats (see under folio 33 recto; D19460) to Deutz Abbey on folio 35 recto opposite (D19463).
There is a scrawled note of laundry in progress over the moored boats. The medieval Rheinmauer defences shown in the foreground were demolished later in the nineteenth century, where the tree-lined Holzmarkt boulevard now runs. The Romanesque St Maria Lyskirchen Church survives, albeit hidden by trees from this side. Beyond, in outline only, are the spire and pinnacles of the Great St Martin church, and the three towers of St Cunibert’s Basilica; they are studied in detail from other angles on D19460 and folios 66 verso–67 recto (D19510–D19511).
Towards the top right, in a complementary view from a similar position, are the undulating profiles of the Siebengebirge (Seven Hills), twenty miles or so south-south-east upstream beyond Bonn, as shown occasionally in the contemporary Holland sketchbook; see Tate D19138 (Turner Bequest CCXIV 151) in particular. They are part of a view towards the Bayenturm, at the southern-eastern corner of Cologne’s walled Altstadt.
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’,3 here and in Holland book.4 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.

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.663.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.663.
3
Powell 1995, p.34.
4
See ibid., p.77 note 20.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Cologne along the River Rhine to the North, from near the St Maria Lyskirchen Church, with Deutz Abbey Opposite; the Bayenturm near St Severin’s Basilica, with the Seven Hills upstream in the Distance 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2020, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-cologne-along-the-river-rhine-to-the-north-from-near-the-st-r1202816, accessed 05 April 2026.