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 Mainz, Looking Downstream from its Eastern Outskirts 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Mainz, Looking Downstream from its Eastern Outskirts’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 69 Verso:
Mainz, Looking Downstream from its Eastern Outskirts 1839
D28488
Turner Bequest CCXC 69 a
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 100 x 163 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[?Nass]’ ‘[?Harb]’ far left; ‘Flu’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This slight sketch of Mainz was taken from the east of the city, looking down the Rhine. It incorporates St Martin’s Cathedral and Church of St Stephan as well as some of the gate towers of Mainz which have stood since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Turner’s inscription ‘Nass’ may refer to the ancient House of Nassau whose Counts controlled Wiesbaden, Idstein, and Weilburg. The note ‘Flu’ may correspond to the inscription on the folio 70 recto (Tate D28489; Turner Bequest CCXC 70) which reads ‘Flusbad’ (‘Flussbad’, i.e. ‘river pool’); ‘Harb’ is possibly a shortening of ‘harbour’.

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Mainz, Looking Downstream from its Eastern Outskirts 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-mainz-looking-downstream-from-its-eastern-outskirts-r1150771, accessed 23 September 2024.