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 The Iron Forges of Quint c.1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Iron Forges of Quint’ c.1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Iron Forges of Quint c.1839
D24823
Turner Bequest CCLIX 258
Gouache, pen and ink and watercolour on blue wove paper, 139 x 191 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX 258’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner shows the flourishing industrial town of Quint, situated on the banks of the Moselle. The view is based on preliminary pencil sketches in the Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence sketchbook (Tate D28419; Turner Bequest CCXC 35). Quint gained its name from its situation as ‘the fifth milestone on the Roman road from Trier to Andernach’, according to Cecilia Powell.1
Two vividly striated cliffs frame the town in Turner’s picture, the rocks here streaked with rust, amber and terracotta gouache and red ink. The ‘lofty chimneys’ of Quint’s forges can be seen belching out smoke in the valley: the town’s chief industry at the time of Turner’s visit was the ‘smelting of iron ore’ which abounded ‘in the neighbouring mountains’.2 Long barges are moored at the river’s edge awaiting their cargo.
1
Powell 1995, p.126 no.44.
2
Michael Joseph Quin, Steam voyages on the Seine, the Moselle, & the Rhine: with railroad visits to the principal cities of Belgium, London 1843, p.302.
Verso:
Stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCLIX–258’ bottom left; inscribed in pencil ‘?25’ centre and ‘CCLIX 258’ bottom right.

Alice Rylance-Watson
September 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Iron Forges of Quint 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-iron-forges-of-quint-r1151019, accessed 26 April 2024.