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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Eight Sketches of the Marienburg from Merl with Separate Sketches of the Ruins and Village of Merl 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Eight Sketches of the Marienburg from Merl with Separate Sketches of the Ruins and Village of Merl’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 116 Verso:
Eight Sketches of the Marienburg from Merl with Separate Sketches of the Ruins and Village of Merl 1824
D19779
Turner Bequest CCXVI 114 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Marienburg Con’ centre left; ‘Merle’ bottom centre; ‘[...] W’ | ‘Marienburg’ near bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner has produced eight diminutive views of the ruined Marienburg convent and the nearby village of Merl on the Moselle. Its hollowed weatherworn remains, overlooking the river from high atop a ridge, are ‘not lost sight of’ by the traveller, according to Stritch, ‘owing to the extraordinary windings of the river’, thus enabling Turner to ‘approach’ and ‘reapproach’ the view of Marienburg several times.1 The convent is recorded elsewhere in this book on Tate D19773–D19775; Turner Bequest CCXVI 112a–113a, 114a in the Moselle (or Rhine) sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D20163–D20164, D20187; Turner Bequest CCXIX 2–3, 26). See also later drawings of 1839: Tate D28299, D28378– D28380; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 5, CCXC 14a–15a. The views of Merl, inscribed ‘Merle’ by Turner, include the Romanesque tower of the former parish church of St Michael.

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2014

1
Bartholomew Stritch, The Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine; or, A six weeks’ tour through the finest river scenery in Europe, by B.S., London 1845, p.56.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Eight Sketches of the Marienburg from Merl with Separate Sketches of the Ruins and Village of Merl 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-eight-sketches-of-the-marienburg-from-merl-with-separate-r1174570, accessed 02 April 2026.