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 > First Mossel and Oxford Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Moselle View with Distant Castle; The Ferry and Ferry-Tower at Schweich 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Moselle View with Distant Castle; The Ferry and Ferry-Tower at Schweich’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Recto:
Moselle View with Distant Castle; The Ferry and Ferry-Tower at Schweich 1839
D28335
Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 23
Pencil on white wove drawing paper, 140 x 235 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Berncastle’
Inscribed in red ink ‘23’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXXIX–23’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner has recorded a view of the Moselle valley, including a barge laden with cargo and crew. The tower in the background has led Cecilia Powell to identify the location as Schweich and the structure as the town’s medieval Fährturm or Ferry Tower which acted as a harbour for the local ferry service running from Trier to Koblenz.1 See also Tate D28346; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 28 a.
Parallel to the short edge of the sketchbook is a view of a town on the banks of the Moselle. Though Turner has inscribed ‘Berncastle’ above the drawing Powell writes that Bernkastel-Kues is not its subject.2

Alice Rylance-Watson
August 2013

1
Cecilia Powell, Turner’s Rivers of Europe: The Rhine, Meuse and Mosel, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1991, Appendix p.219
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Moselle View with Distant Castle; The Ferry and Ferry-Tower at Schweich 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-moselle-view-with-distant-castle-the-ferry-and-ferry-tower-r1150616, accessed 19 September 2024.