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 > Cochem to Coblenz - Home Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Cochem in the Distance, Looking Upstream 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Cochem in the Distance, Looking Upstream’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 7 Recto:
Cochem in the Distance, Looking Upstream 1839
D28549
Turner Bequest CCXCI 7
Pencil on cream laid writing paper, 100 x 156 mm
Watermarked ‘[v d m] eulen’
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘7’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI–7’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Rendered in fine and agile line, here Turner shows Cochem and its Reichsburg, a medieval castle which was once the seat of the palatinate counts and the first German King Konrad III.1 It fell into ruin after an occupation by the French King Louis XIV over the course of the Nine Years War and remained in a decaying state until 1868, when it was rebuilt in the Gothic Revival architectural style.2
For other 1839 pencil sketches of the Reichsburg see Tate D28543, D28544, D28546–D28548; Turner Bequest CCXCI 3a, 4, 5a–6a; the Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence sketchbook (Tate D28358, D28361; Turner Bequest CCXC 4a, 6); the First Mossel and Oxford sketchbook (Tate D28318; CCLXXXIX 14a) and the earlier Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D19792, D19794; Turner Bequest CCXVI 121, 122). For other gouaches of Cochem see Tate D20238, D20253, D24723, D24725, D24806, D28986; Turner Bequest CCXXI E, T, CLIX 158, 160, 241, CCXCII 39. See also the 1840 gouache Cochem from above the Enderttal (Tate D28992; Turner Bequest CCXCII 45).

Alice Rylance-Watson
August 2013

1
‘History of Cochem Castle’, Reichsburg, Cochem, http://www.burg-cochem.de/english/history.htm, accessed 11 July 2013.
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Cochem in the Distance, Looking Upstream 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 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-cochem-in-the-distance-looking-upstream-r1150833, accessed 22 November 2024.