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 The Fischerpforte, Cologne, from the Rhine Riverfront, with the Great St Martin Church Beyond; the Tower of the Church; ?the Interior of the Cathedral 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Fischerpforte, Cologne, from the Rhine Riverfront, with the Great St Martin Church Beyond; the Tower of the Church; ?the Interior of the Cathedral’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 143 Verso:
The Fischerpforte, Cologne, from the Rhine Riverfront, with the Great St Martin Church Beyond; the Tower of the Church; ?the Interior of the Cathedral 1825
D19123
Turner Bequest CCXIV 143a
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Fishe | Porte’ towards top left, and ‘Dom[...]’ at centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page was used horizontally for two distinct Cologne subjects. On the left is the Fischerpforte gateway, phonetically labelled by Turner, on the west bank of the River Rhine1 just south-east of the Great St Martin church2 beside a round stone tower with a wooden superstructure and steep roof along the defensive Rheinmauer wall. There is a separate study of the east side of the Romanesque church tower (the only side with pinnacles at that time) from a slightly more oblique angle at the top centre. Compare the studies from the adjacent Fischmarkt on folio 141 recto (D19118), and see Tate D19511 (Turner Bequest CCXV 67) in the contemporary Holland, Meuse and Cologne sketchbook, where the tower and church are seen within a wider river view; this immediate section of the riverfront was demolished by 1835.3
On the right is a fragmentary study of a substantial Gothic building, with a cluster of capitals, arches below a clerestory, and tracery dashed in here and there. It is not clear whether the sketch is from a single point of view, likely in an interior, and the setting remains to be positively identified. The word beside it appears to begin ‘Dom’, the German for a large church or cathedral (compare the inscription on folio 142 recto; D19120), so the subject may be the nearby Cologne Cathedral itself (compare the details of its exterior stonework on D19118), of which only the east end was then substantially complete. There is another church interior on D19120.
Despite nineteenth-century redevelopment, substantial damage during the Second World War and later bridges, some features of Cologne’s main river prospects remain recognisable, including St Martin’s. See under D19118 for discussion of views of the city from this tour and other occasions.4 Folio 144 recto opposite (D19124) also shows the church above the riverfront.

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
Seen from the same angle in a detailed ‘Bleistiftzeichnung nach Sauer’ (pencil drawing after Sauer), imaged with historical description but no further details of the work at ‘Fischerpforte – Köln im Wandel der Zeit 1800–1900’, Bilderbuch Köln, accessed 16 June 2020, http://www.bilderbuch-koeln.de/Fotos/altstadt_nord_fischerpforte_gerhards_historisch_stiche_473581 (website subsequently discontinued).
2
As seen in the background of a detailed ‘Federzeichnung von Finkenbaum’ (pen drawing by Finkenbaum), imaged with no further details of the work at ‘Fischerpforte – Köln im Wandel der Zeit 1800–1900’, Bilderbuch Köln, accessed 16 June 2020, http://www.bilderbuch-koeln.de/Fotos/altstadt_nord_fischerpforte_historisch_gerhards_stiche_473580 (website subsequently discontinued).
3
See also a 2000 painting reconstructing the immediate vicinity in the middle ages, Hochwasser am Fischmarkt, and associated notes at Siegfried Glos, Das alte Köln, accessed 1 July 2020, https://www.das-alte-koeln.de/hochwasser_am_fischmarkt.html.
4
See also Powell 1995, pp.34, 77 note 20.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Fischerpforte, Cologne, from the Rhine Riverfront, with the Great St Martin Church Beyond; the Tower of the Church; ?the Interior of the Cathedral 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-the-fischerpforte-cologne-from-the-rhine-riverfront-with-the-r1202475, accessed 16 July 2025.