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 ?Luxembourg 1824

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Luxembourg’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 86 Verso:
?Luxembourg 1824
D19719
Turner Bequest CCXVI 85 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is thought to be an example of a so-called ‘carriage sketch’: the rather unruly jottings made by Turner as he was driven in a rickety carriage on bumpy roads. Cecilia Powell simply catalogues this sketch and subsequent drawings (Tate D19717–D19718, D19720; Turner Bequest CCXVI 84a–85, 86) as ‘sketches drawn from a moving carriage’ because of their extremely rough and unsteady handling, though they are most likely views of Luxembourg City’s steep plateaux.
The uppermost sketch is more clearly rendered and shows a fortified ridge with various towers and buildings: this may be the Grund plateau with fortifications to the far left, Neumünster Abbey, the spires of Notre-Dame Cathedral and the tower of Saint Michael to the right.

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘?Luxembourg 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-luxembourg-r1174510, accessed 05 April 2026.