J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Enderttor and Alte Thorschenke, Cochem c.1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Enderttor and Alte Thorschenke, Cochem c.1839
D24806
Turner Bequest CCLIX 241
Gouache and watercolour on blue wove paper, 191 x 141 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX 241’ bottom left ascending
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner depicts the Enderttor, a fourteenth-century town gate which lies by the River Endert in Cochem, Germany. The half-timbered building with a round gable immediately to the right of the gate is the Alte Thorschenke tavern, built into the fortified walls of the town. As Cecilia Powell writes, ‘Turner must surely have been among its customers, probably on more than one occasion, and may indeed have stayed there’.1
The composition is based on two pencil sketches in the 1839 Cochem to Coblenz – Home sketchbook (Tate D28541–D28542; Turner Bequest CCXCI 2a–3). Given its vertical format (rare among Turner’s gouaches), this work was likely ‘conceived and executed as a companion’ to the view of St Martin’s Church, Cochem (Tate D20253; Turner Bequest CCXXI T).
Rendered in rose pink is the profile of Cochem Castle in the distance, framed by a layered succession of steep valley cliffs painted in soft amber and pale mauve gouache. The architecture is delineated in brushstrokes of black and rust-red wash, applied swiftly and, in places, with dry brush to expose the grain of the paper.
1
Powell 1995, pp.134–5 no.54.
Verso:
Stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCLIX–241’ towards bottom right; inscribed in pencil ‘38a’ centre towards right; inscribed in pencil in different hand ‘CCLIX 241’ top right.

Alice Rylance-Watson
September 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Enderttor and Alte Thorschenke, Cochem 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-the-enderttor-and-alte-thorschenke-cochem-r1151017, accessed 19 April 2024.