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 > Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Three Views Drawn on the Way through the Hills towards Cochem, with the Burg Seen in the Distance; The Burg at Cochem 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Views Drawn on the Way through the Hills towards Cochem, with the Burg Seen in the Distance; The Burg at Cochem’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Verso:
Three Views Drawn on the Way through the Hills towards Cochem, with the Burg Seen in the Distance; The Burg at Cochem 1839
D28358
Turner Bequest CCXC 4 a
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 163 x 100 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Coch’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These finely wrought sketches depict the hills and valleys which Turner encountered on his journey back up the Moselle towards Cochem (see Tate D28358; Turner Bequest CCXC 4). At the bottom right is a summary linear profile of the Reichsburg or Cochem Castle.
The castle was first mentioned in a document in 1051 and was for many years the established seat of the palatinate counts until the first German King Konrad III declared it an imperial castle.1 It fell into ruin after an occupation by the French King Louis XIV over the course of the Nine Years’ War and remained in a decaying state until 1868 when it was rebuilt in the Gothic Revival architectural style.2 In Turner’s sketch, the artist captures its crumbling and pitted silhouette, inscribing it ‘Coch’ below. There is a further depiction of the Reichsburg on folio 6 recto of this sketchbook (Tate D28361; Turner Bequest CCXC 6). See also the First Mossel and Oxford sketchbook belonging to the 1839 tour (Tate D28318; CCLXXXIX 14a) and the earlier Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D19792, D19794; Turner Bequest CCXVI 121, 122).

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

1
‘History of Cochem Castle’, Reichsburg, Cochem, http://www.burg-cochem.de/english/history.htm, accessed 11 July 2013.
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Three Views Drawn on the Way through the Hills towards Cochem, with the Burg Seen in the Distance; The Burg at Cochem 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-three-views-drawn-on-the-way-through-the-hills-towards-r1150643, accessed 25 April 2024.