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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > The Second Meuse-Moselle Tour 1839 > Cochem to Coblenz - Home Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Spire of St Martin's Church, Cochem 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Spire of St Martin's Church, Cochem’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Recto:
The Spire of St Martin’s Church, Cochem 1839
D28540
Turner Bequest CCXCI 2
Pencil on cream laid writing paper, 156 x 100 mm
Watermarked ‘v d m[eulen]’
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘2’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI–2’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This swiftly rendered pencil sketch of St Martin’s Church, Cochem was developed into a striking vertical-format gouache and watercolour drawing on blue paper (Tate D20253; Turner Bequest CCXXI T). The church was built between 1456 and 1503, and the elaborate steeple and onion-shaped cupola was added in the eighteenth century.1
For Turner’s 1839 sketches of St Martin’s Church and Cochem see Tate D28543; Turner Bequest CCXCI 3a; the Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence sketchbook (Tate D28359–D28363; Turner Bequest CCXC 5–7) and the First Mossel and Oxford sketchbook (Tate D28295, D28296, D28318, D28319; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 3, 3a, 14a, 15). For earlier views see the Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D19792, D19795; Turner Bequest CCXVI 121, 122a).
For other gouaches of Cochem see Tate D20238, D24723, D24725, D24806, D28986; Turner Bequest CCXXI E, CLIX 158, 160, 241, CCXCII 39. See also the 1840 gouache Cochem from above the Enderttal (Tate D28992; Turner Bequest CCXCII 45).
1
Powell 1991, p.140.
Technical notes:
The leather loop on the inside front cover has stained the sheet.

Alice Rylance-Watson
August 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Spire of St Martin’s Church, Cochem 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-spire-of-st-martins-church-cochem-r1150823, accessed 26 April 2024.