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 > Meuse-Moselle Gouache and Watercolour ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ürzig and the Hermitage on the Michaelslei c.1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ürzig and the Hermitage on the Michaelslei’ c.1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Ürzig and the Hermitage on the Michaelslei c.1839
D24789
Turner Bequest CCLIX 224
Gouache, watercolour and brown and red ink on blue wove paper, 137 x 191 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX 224’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner depicts the curve of the Moselle as it meanders towards the village of Ürzig in Germany. The village is seen at far left and is identifiable by a small chapel. Opposite a spit of sand upon which a group of boatmen congregate is the Michaelslei, a vast ridge of rock rendered with vivid amber and rust gouache, its striations described with fine red ink. Within the façade of this ‘high red cliff’, writes Quin, ‘may be seen a castellated wall’ which ‘covers the mouth of a cavern... occupied in the olden time by a band of robbers, each of whom, however, claimed to be of some order of knighthood’ and ‘was in a later age the residence of a pious hermit’.1 River boatmen are sketched summarily in sepia ink, in a similar manner to the figures in Turner’s Cochem from Cond gouache (Tate D24725; Turner Bequest CCLIX 160).
1
Michael Joseph Quin, Steam voyages on the Seine, the Moselle, & the Rhine: with railroad visits to the principal cities of Belgium, London 1843, p.8.
Verso:
Inscribed in pencil ‘CCLIX 224’ bottom right

Alice Rylance-Watson
September 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Ürzig and the Hermitage on the Michaelslei c.1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 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-rzig-and-the-hermitage-on-the-michaelslei-r1151015, accessed 27 April 2024.