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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Brussels up to Mannheim - Rhine ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Castle of Chokier near Liège on the Meuse; Landing‑Stage and Buildings, Possibly at Mainz 1833

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Castle of Chokier near Liège on the Meuse; Landing‑Stage and Buildings, Possibly at Mainz’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 82 Recto:
The Castle of Chokier near Liège on the Meuse; Landing‑Stage and Buildings, Possibly at Mainz 1833
D29754
Turner Bequest CCXCVI 81
Pencil on cream wove paper, 185 x 113 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Chateaux Chocker | Chorcher’ near top right
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘81’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCVI 81’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The uppermost view shows the Castle of Chokier, situated on the north bank of the Meuse between Liège and Huy. Dominating the valley atop a precipitous rock, the chateau, for centuries the seat of the ancient Surlet de Chokier family, is ‘an old building, faced with a modern front of Italian architecture’, according to the travel writer John Murray.1 The eighteenth-century façade belies the building’s thirteenth-century heritage, which is represented by a single remaining medieval tower topped with a conical roof. ‘Chateaux Chocker | Chorcher’ is inscribed below. For more drawings of Chokier and its chateau see Tate D19610–D19618, D19635–D19636, D20085; Turner Bequest CCXVI 30–34, 43–43a, CCXVII 1a.
Sketches of moorings and riverside buildings probably at Mainz are rendered below the view of Chokier. The domed tower and turreted tower in the distance of the lowermost view are Mainz Cathedral and the Holzturm, shown in the sketch on the folio opposite (Tate D29753; Turner Bequest CCXCVI 80a).

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2017

1
John Murray, A Handbook for Travellers on the Continent: Being a Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland, London 1853, p.172. See also ‘Château de Chokier’, Chokier, accessed 21 March 2014, http://www.chokier.com/FILES/CHATEAU/Historique.html

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Castle of Chokier near Liège on the Meuse; Landing‑Stage and Buildings, Possibly at Mainz 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2017, 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-the-castle-of-chokier-near-liege-on-the-meuse-landingstage-r1203052, accessed 04 June 2026.