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 River Rhine at Düsseldorf from the South, with the Spire of St Lambertus's Church; Women on a Hillside, ?Overlooking the Rhine or the Meuse 1825

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Rhine at Düsseldorf from the South, with the Spire of St Lambertus's Church; Women on a Hillside, ?Overlooking the Rhine or the Meuse’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 140 Verso:
The River Rhine at Düsseldorf from the South, with the Spire of St Lambertus’s Church; Women on a Hillside, ?Overlooking the Rhine or the Meuse 1825
D19117
Turner Bequest CCXIV 140a
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Red’ and ‘Red Gold’ centre right, around figures, and extensively along the outer edge with notes on Cologne (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Cologne, from the river’): ‘NO (CFB)’.1 The initials are those of the Turner scholar C.F. Bell, who emphatically marked another copy in the same way.2 Cecilia Powell identified the sketches here and on the recto (D19116) as showing Düsseldorf, also noting views of the city in the contemporary Holland, Meuse and Cologne sketchbook (Tate D19464–D19467; Turner Bequest CCXV 35a–37),3 all of which Finberg had initially thought to depict Cologne4 (see under folio 141 recto; D19118).
With the page turned horizontally, there appear to be two separate views. Along the top is a northward prospect down the Rhine to Düsseldorf, centred on the cupola of the Josephskapelle, the spire of St Lambertus’s Church, and the shallow roof of the Schlossturm, all of which survive along the riverfront, with the city’s various other churches along the skyline and St Maximilian’s towards the right foreground; compare one of the two-page panoramas in the Holland, Meuse and Cologne book (D19466–D19467; Turner Bequest CCXV 36a–37).
The lower half of the page seems to show a separate view, with a broad river leading to a wooded horizon, with women seated on a slope in the foreground, and a separate study of one of their bonnets. This may be another Rhine scene, or perhaps along the Meuse, which Turner travelled later on the tour, in hillier country between Liège and Maastricht (see under folios 155 verso and 179 verso respectively; D19147, D19195). See this sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many figure scenes, and studies of individuals, their costume and headgear.
The other way up at the outer edge is an unrelated series of inscriptions, referring to features along the west bank of the Rhine at Cologne, numerous views of which begin on folio 141 opposite (D19118):
[?Sw...] | Nicolas Pf[...]’, ‘Hole [i.e. Holz] Pforte | Rhine forte’, ‘[?Franken] Werf | Kr[?ahn ... Sl...]’, ‘Ceesar Werfe | Bull werks forte | ‘Fra[n]ken Pforte’
They may have been hastily copied from an engraved map of 1822 by Friedrich Ludwig Hoffmeister and Joseph Engelmann, or a variant; the map is aligned with north to the right, the city at the top and the river running from left to right, as suggested by the relative positions and orientation of Turner’s notes. The repeated ‘Pforte’ (or variants) indicates a gateway, and ‘Werft’ a dock or shipyard.
1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.656.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.656; the initial Cologne identification was followed in von der Borch and Bott 1980, p.70.
3
See Powell 1991, p.61 note 36, and Powell 1995, pp.34, 77 note 19.
4
See Finberg 1909, II, pp.656, 663.
Technical notes:
The red-brown smear and adjacent stains at the top right appear to be oil paint, offset to or from the Cologne studies on D19118 opposite, likely from Turner’s having the sketchbook to hand while working on the 1826 painting Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat, Evening (Frick Collection, New York)1 discussed under folio 143 recto (D19122). It also passed through to the recto of the present leaf (D19116).

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.141–3 no.232, pl.235 (colour).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The River Rhine at Düsseldorf from the South, with the Spire of St Lambertus’s Church; Women on a Hillside, ?Overlooking the Rhine or the Meuse 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-river-rhine-at-dusseldorf-from-the-south-with-the-spire-r1202469, accessed 21 July 2025.