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 > Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Beilstein and Burg Metternich, from the Landing-Stage Opposite 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Beilstein and Burg Metternich, from the Landing-Stage Opposite’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 8 Verso:
Beilstein and Burg Metternich, from the Landing-Stage Opposite 1839
D28366
Turner Bequest CCXC 8 a
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 100 x 163 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Sketching from a landing-stage on the Moselle Turner produced this picturesque and finely rendered drawing of the village of Beilstein, situated, as Bartholomew Stritch writes, ‘at the foot of a rock, on the left bank of the river’.1 The baroque Saint Joseph’s Monastery Church stands boldly at the centre of the village surrounded by gabled houses and the arched bridge traversing the Moselle can be seen towards the right. Beilstein is presided over by the ruined Burg Metternich, imposing, dominant and almost certainly increased in size and scale by Turner for visual effect.
For further drawings of the Burg Metternich in this sketchbook see Tate D28364, D28365, D28367, D28368, D28527, D28528, D28537; Turner Bequest CCXC 7a, 8, 9, 9a, 86a, 87, 91a. See also the First Mossel and Oxford sketchbook belonging to the same 1839 tour (Tate D28301, D28320, D28321; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 6a, 15a, 16). See also the 1839 gouache and watercolour drawing of the Burg (Tate D20239; Turner Bequest CCXXI F).
For earlier sketches of the monument see the Rivers Meuse and Moselle and Moselle (or Rhine) sketchbooks of 1824 (Tate D19784, D19787, D19788, D19790, D19792, D20166, D20167; Turner Bequest CCXVI 117, 118a, 119, 120, 121, CCXIX 5, 6).

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

1
Bartholomew Stritch, The Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine; or, A six weeks’ tour through the finest river scenery in Europe, by B.S., London 1845, p.57.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Beilstein and Burg Metternich, from the Landing-Stage Opposite 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-beilstein-and-burg-metternich-from-the-landing-stage-r1150651, accessed 22 November 2024.