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 The Burg at Cochem; Small Views of Cochem and the Burg from Various Directions; Klotten and Burg Coraidelstein 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Burg at Cochem; Small Views of Cochem and the Burg from Various Directions; Klotten and Burg Coraidelstein’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 124 Recto:
The Burg at Cochem; Small Views of Cochem and the Burg from Various Directions; Klotten and Burg Coraidelstein 1824
D19794
Turner Bequest CCXVI 122
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
Watermark ‘smith & [allnut] | 18[22]’
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘122’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–122’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In nine diminutive and carefully rendered sketches, here Turner studies the vestiges of the tenth-century Reichsburg Castle at Cochem, and from centre to rear, the Burg Coraidelstein at Klotten. Cochem’s imperial castle was left in ruins following French attack during the Nine Years War; the building was demolished, set on fire, and finally blown up by Louis XIV’s troops on 19 May 1689.1 Turner pictures what miraculously remained of the building, adding details like a tiny sun in one of the sketches.
The remaining drawings are of Klotten, an ancient village near Cochem which is also dominated by the ruins of a feudal castle called Coraidelstein. Turner briefly suggests the lofty and tapering spire of the Church of St Maximin in a number of the views. For further views of Klotten in this sketchbook see Tate D19797–D19798; Turner Bequest CCXVI 123a–124. See also Tate D28298, D28309, D28344, D28550, D28551, D28553; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 4a, 10, 27a, CCXCI 7a, 8, 9. For gouache and watercolour drawings of Klotten see Tate D20237, D28967; Turner Bequest CCXXI D, CCXCII 78.

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2014

1
‘History of Cochem Castle’, Reichsburg Cochem, accessed 15 May 2014, http://www.burg-cochem.de/26.html?&L=1

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Burg at Cochem; Small Views of Cochem and the Burg from Various Directions; Klotten and Burg Coraidelstein 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-the-burg-at-cochem-small-views-of-cochem-and-the-burg-from-r1174585, accessed 08 October 2025.