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 ... > Moselle (or Rhine) Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Distant View of the Landshut, Looking Downstream 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant View of the Landshut, Looking Downstream’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Recto:
Distant View of the Landshut, Looking Downstream 1824
D20178
Turner Bequest CCXIX 17
Pencil, chalk and watercolour on white wove paper, 160 x 235 mm
Watermark ‘j wh[atman] | turk[ey mills] | 1[824]’
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXIX–17’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This view of the Landshut can be related to a vivid and highly finished colour drawing of Bernkastel on the Mosel (c.1830).1 Other preparatory material includes Tate D19757–D19760, D20176–D20177, D20179–D20182; Turner Bequest CCXVI 104a–106, CCXIX 15–16, 18–21. The castle of Landshut is recorded here from the riverbank opposite, its cylindrical keep highlighted with brief flecks of pure white chalk.
The Burg Landshut is believed to have been erected as early as the fourth century, with a new castle built near these foundations in the thirteenth under the lordship of the Archbishop of Trier, Heinrich II von Vinstingen.2 Destroyed in a fire of 1692, it has lain in ruin ever since. Its gaunt and isolate remains appear fittingly spectral in this drawing, obscured by a heavy mist of translucent grey wash.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.465 no.1378; reproduced in colour in Powell 1995, p.108.
2
‘Ruins of Landshut Castle’, Ferienland Bernkastel-Kues, accessed 25 November 2013 http://en.bernkastel.de/holiday-region/bernkastel-kues/what-to-see/ruins-of-landshut-castle-burg-landshut-express-landshut-castle-express.html
Verso:
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Alice Rylance-Watson
November 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Distant View of the Landshut, Looking Downstream 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2013, 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-distant-view-of-the-landshut-looking-downstream-r1174902, accessed 25 April 2024.