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 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Sailing Barges Moored off the Rhine Riverfront below the Great St Martin Church at Cologne, with Deutz Abbey Opposite and the Seven Hills in the Distance; Studies of Women's Bonnets 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sailing Barges Moored off the Rhine Riverfront below the Great St Martin Church at Cologne, with Deutz Abbey Opposite and the Seven Hills in the Distance; Studies of Women's Bonnets’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 149 Verso:
Sailing Barges Moored off the Rhine Riverfront below the Great St Martin Church at Cologne, with Deutz Abbey Opposite and the Seven Hills in the Distance; Studies of Women’s Bonnets 1825
D19135
Turner Bequest CCXIV 149a
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the view is south along the River Rhine from the west bank at Cologne. The viewpoint was likely beside the south end of the bastion which features in Turner’s large oil painting Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat. Evening, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1826 (Frick Collection, New York).1 There is a related study including the bastion itself and the archway at its north end on the recto (D19134), below the spire and pinnacles of the Great St Martin church, part of which seems to be just visible above the roof at the top right here.
The rusticated Baroque gateway appears to be the one shown just left of the bastion, at the centre of one half of a panoramic view from the river in the contemporary Holland, Meuse and Cologne sketchbook (Tate D19511; Turner Bequest CCXV 67). Beyond the masts of the boats moored on the left, two or three dashes on the river probably indicate the bridge of boats leading to Deutz Abbey, on the east bank at the far left; compare the treatment in the two-part view from further north on folio 148 verso (D19133).
Above the bridge, twenty miles or so upstream beyond Bonn, are the undulating Siebengebirge (Seven Hills). Compare the backgrounds of folios 143 recto and 146 verso (D19122, D19129), and the profiles on folio 151 recto (D19138), and see also Tate D19462 (Turner Bequest CCXV 34a) in the Holland, Meuse and Cologne book. Lastly, at the bottom right are separate studies of women in profile wearing small bonnets or caps, a frilly bonnet on its own, and what seems to be a back view of another head.
Despite nineteenth-century redevelopment, substantial damage during the Second World War and later bridges, features of Cologne’s main river prospects remain recognisable, although nothing survives of what is shown here apart from the abbey and St Martin’s. See under folio 141 recto (D19118) for discussion of views of the city from this tour and other occasions,2 and the sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many shipping and figure subjects, and studies of individuals, their costume and headgear.

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
Ibid., pp.141–3 no.232, pl.235 (colour).
2
See also Powell 1995, pp.34, 77 note 20.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Sailing Barges Moored off the Rhine Riverfront below the Great St Martin Church at Cologne, with Deutz Abbey Opposite and the Seven Hills in the Distance; Studies of Women’s Bonnets 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-sailing-barges-moored-off-the-rhine-riverfront-below-the-r1202487, accessed 22 July 2025.