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 Bernkastel and the Landshut, Looking Upstream 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bernkastel and the Landshut, Looking Upstream’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 7 Recto:
Bernkastel and the Landshut, Looking Upstream 1824
D20176
Turner Bequest CCXIX 15
Pencil, chalk and watercolour on white wove paper, 160 x 235 mm
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘15’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXIX–15’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This slight and summary pencil drawing shows the town of Bernkastel on the Moselle, dominated by the Burg Landshut at centre. Turner’s sparing use of pure white chalk enlivens the view, evoking the fall of light on the riverbank and the Church of St Michael. Hairline strands of chalk lead the eye in a zigzag trajectory through the fissures of the mountain range toward the keep of the ruined castle.
This drawing and others in the 1824 sketchbooks are related to a highly finished watercolour of the town and its castle produced in around 1830 (Stadt Bernkastel-Kues); see Tate D19757–D19760, D20177–D20182; Turner Bequest CCXVI 104a–106, CCXIX 16–21.1
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.
Verso:
Blank

Alice Rylance-Watson
November 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Bernkastel and the Landshut, Looking Upstream 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-bernkastel-and-the-landshut-looking-upstream-r1174908, accessed 25 April 2024.