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 > Givet, Mézières, Verdun, Metz, Luxemburg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Grünewald, Bock, Pont du Château and Town of Luxembourg from the North, along the Valley of the Alzette beyond the Bridge with the Vauban Towers 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Grünewald, Bock, Pont du Château and Town of Luxembourg from the North, along the Valley of the Alzette beyond the Bridge with the Vauban Towers’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 64 Recto:
The Grünewald, Bock, Pont du Château and Town of Luxembourg from the North, along the Valley of the Alzette beyond the Bridge with the Vauban Towers 1839
D28281
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 64
Pencil on cream laid writing paper, 101 x 168 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘64’ bottom right
Stamped in black ink ‘CCLXXXVIII–64’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Rendered with swift agile line, this sketch depicts two of the plateaux of Luxembourg: the Grünewald and the Rocher du Bock, with the northern stretch of the narrow Alzette valley below. Towards the centre, the castle of the Bock is visible followed by the two-storey arched Pont du Château and the Ville Haute with the Church of St Michael. Towards the foreground at right Turner has suggested some of the architecture of the French military engineer Vauban’s fortified towers. This sketch and those on folios 64 verso to 67 recto (Tate D28282–D28287; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 64a–67) formed the basis of a gouache and watercolour drawing taken on blue paper in around 1839.1
For other sketches of Luxembourg in this book see Tate D28228–D28231, D28266–D28280; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 32a–34, 56a–63a. See also the earlier Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D19712, D19714; Turner Bequest CCXVI 82, 83).

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.421 no.1022.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Grünewald, Bock, Pont du Château and Town of Luxembourg from the North, along the Valley of the Alzette beyond the Bridge with the Vauban Towers 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-grunewald-bock-pont-du-chateau-and-town-of-luxembourg-r1150558, accessed 25 April 2024.