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 Beilstein and Burg Metternich, Looking Downstream; Burg Metternich and Riverside Buildings at Beilstein; ?Distant View of Trarbach 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Beilstein and Burg Metternich, Looking Downstream; Burg Metternich and Riverside Buildings at Beilstein; ?Distant View of Trarbach’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 9 Verso:
Beilstein and Burg Metternich, Looking Downstream; Burg Metternich and Riverside Buildings at Beilstein; ?Distant View of Trarbach 1839
D28368
Turner Bequest CCXC 9 a
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 163 x 100 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Vines’ top left (inverted), ‘Trabach’ bottom left parallel to gutter (inverted)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned upside down Turner has drawn two small yet carefully limned drawings of Beilstein and Burg Metternich running across the upper and middle registers. The first of these is inscribed with ‘Vines’, a note to remind the artist of the vegetation growing up the slopes of Moselle.
With the sketchbook orientated horizontally, Beilstein is depicted again at the right, the castle rising loftily atop a conical mount above the village. The final drawing is directly below and likely represents Trarbach. This diminutive yet picturesque composition has been squared off by Turner and annotated with his approximation of the village’s name, ‘Trabach’.

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Beilstein and Burg Metternich, Looking Downstream; Burg Metternich and Riverside Buildings at Beilstein; ?Distant View of Trarbach 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-beilstein-and-burg-metternich-looking-downstream-burg-r1150653, accessed 25 April 2024.