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 and Luxembourg City from the North, beyond the Vauban Towers 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Grünewald, Bock and Luxembourg City from the North, beyond the Vauban Towers’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 65 Recto:
The Grünewald, Bock and Luxembourg City from the North, beyond the Vauban Towers 1839
D28283
Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 65
Pencil on cream laid writing paper, 101 x 168 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘65’ bottom right
Stamped in black ink ‘CCLXXXVIII–65’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Looking beyond the bridge over the Alzette River and the the French military engineer Vauban’s towers (visible in the foreground), Turner’s rough sketch of Luxembourg depicts the Grünewald at left, the Bock and the city at right with its manifold buildings, churches and fortifications. This sketch and others (Tate D28281, D28283–D28287; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 64, 65–67) 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 and Luxembourg City from the North, beyond 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-and-luxembourg-city-from-the-north-beyond-r1150560, accessed 23 April 2024.