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 Stormy Sky; The Rhine Front at Koblenz, Looking Downstream; The Landing Stage on the Rhine Front at Koblenz Looking Upstream 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Stormy Sky; The Rhine Front at Koblenz, Looking Downstream; The Landing Stage on the Rhine Front at Koblenz Looking Upstream’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 146 Verso:
Stormy Sky; The Rhine Front at Koblenz, Looking Downstream; The Landing Stage on the Rhine Front at Koblenz Looking Upstream 1824
D19837
Turner Bequest CCXVI 143 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Square Pack with Smooth Corn’ rear
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sheet is filled with a variety of cursory sketches of the Rhine at Koblenz. The uppermost jotting depicts a turbulent sky hanging heavily above a steeply gabled building. The central sketch shows two figures next to some steps leading down to the river; the twin Rhenish-helm towers of the Basilica of St Kastor can be seen in the middle distance and the spires of the Florinskirche beyond. The rear view shows a huddle of boats and barges moored at a landing stage on the Rhine. Cargo is collected in piles on the quayside. Turner has inscribed ‘Square Pack with Smooth Corn’ (possibly ‘corners’) at bottom right. The Alte Krahnen, a medieval tread-wheel crane, can be seen in the distance.

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Stormy Sky; The Rhine Front at Koblenz, Looking Downstream; The Landing Stage on the Rhine Front at Koblenz Looking Upstream 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-stormy-sky-the-rhine-front-at-koblenz-looking-downstream-the-r1174630, accessed 20 September 2024.