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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Seven Sketches, mostly Showing Schweich and Kirsch Facing Each Other across the Moselle 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Seven Sketches, mostly Showing Schweich and Kirsch Facing Each Other across the Moselle’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 101 Recto:
Seven Sketches, mostly Showing Schweich and Kirsch Facing Each Other across the Moselle 1824
D19748
Turner Bequest CCXVI 100
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Esel’ top centre; ‘EN’ top centre; ‘White [?House]’ top far left; ‘Switch’ top left; ‘Kirtch’ top centre;
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘100’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–100’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In this series of seven views Turner depicts the Moselle villages of Schweich (‘Switch’) and Kirsch (‘Kirtch’). These sketches were taken as Turner made his way from Trier towards Neumagen on 29 August 1824. The first of these communities is known for its whitewashed ferry towers (Fähretürme), shown by Turner in the central and lowermost sketches and in drawings belonging to the 1839 tour (see Tate D28335, D28346; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 23, 28a). These structures were also noticed by the British diplomat and diarist, Ernest Satow (1843–1929), who travelled to Schweich in 1875. In a diary entry for July of that year, Satow writes that ferry towers of Schweich ‘are curious, one square & one octagonal. A wire is stretched across from one to the other. It carries a ring to which is attached a boat rope. The ferryman sets the boat free, & steers it so that it is carried across by the force of the current’.1
The village of Issel is shown in a tiny sketch at the uppermost outer edge (see also Tate D19747; Turner Bequest CCXVI 99 a). Kirsch, now part of the town of Longuich, is depicted below Issel; Saint Laurentius’ Church, identified by a tall tapering spire, is pictured at the water’s edge.

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2014

1
Sir Ernest Satow, Ian Ruxton (ed.), A Diplomat in Japan, Part II: The Diaries of Ernest Satow, 1870–1883, p.117.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Seven Sketches, mostly Showing Schweich and Kirsch Facing Each Other across the Moselle 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-seven-sketches-mostly-showing-schweich-and-kirsch-facing-r1174539, accessed 04 April 2026.