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

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 upper and lower subjects do indeed show aspects of the city, each continued from folio 34 verso opposite (D19462). The viewpoint for the lower sketch, looking north from off the west bank of the Rhine, was possibly the spit of land along the channel subsequently developed as the Rheinauhafen, near the St Maria Lyskirchen Church (shown towards the foreground on the other page). At the gutter, this half commences with the distant Kunibertsturm on the west bank, at the north-east corner of the central Altstadt district. Deutz Abbey is across the river towards the right, over the lightly indicated bridge of boats (see under folio 33 recto; D19460); from this angle, it is now hidden by tower blocks near where the Deutzer Brücke runs.

Along the top is a complementary view from a similar position, south along the west bank to the Bayenturm tower, the Kunibertsturm’s counterpart at that end of the medieval Rheinmauer defences (demolished late in the nineteenth century). The Romanesque St Severin’s Basilica, west of the tower, is squeezed in at the top edge. Hulls are shown of the bank at a boatyard, clarified by Turner’s label. Beyond, the view is continued on the opposite page south-south-east to the distant Siebengebirge (Seven Hills). Today, the equivalent views from on or around the Severinsbrücke are also dominated by tower blocks along this reach, which flank and hide the Bayenturm. It and the church are shown from the other direction in the contemporary Holland sketchbook (Tate D19145; Turner Bequest CCXIV 154a).

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.