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

In this series of sketches Turner pictures the villages of Burg, Reil and the Marienburg, the ruins of a medieval Augustinian convent overlooking the Moselle. The Victorian travel writer Michael Joseph Quin states that the Marienburg cloisters were ‘occupied for a while by twelve canonesses of noble descent; but the position was found of so much importance in times of war, that it was frequently occupied by troops’ and the nuns were forced to leave ‘their holy retreat’.1

The Marienburg is recorded again on Tate D19774–D19775, D19779; Turner Bequest CCXVI 113–113a, 114a in the Moselle (or Rhine) sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D20163–D20164, D20187; Turner Bequest CCXIX 2–3, 26). See also later drawings of 1839: Tate D28299, D28378– D28380; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 5, CCXC 14a–15a.

Burg and Reil are depicted in the uppermost and central sketches respectively. In the picture of Burg, Turner makes note of a ‘water conduit’ and the ‘bleaching’ of ‘linen’ at the river front; while at Reil (inscribed ‘Riol’), seen at right, he notes the ‘Mill’ and at left, the ‘kirche’ on the opposite side of the Moselle to the actual town. During the middle ages a church (‘Kirche’ in German) was erected on this side of the Moselle on the foundations of a Gallo-Roman temple, and subsequently an important pilgrimage site called Reilkirch was established.2 However, the church depicted in Turner’s drawing was destroyed in the later decades of the nineteenth century, being positioned so impractically far away from its own congregation.3