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 The Kursaal, Wiesbaden, Seen from across the Lake in the Kurpark 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Kursaal, Wiesbaden, Seen from across the Lake in the Kurpark’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 63 Verso:
The Kursaal, Wiesbaden, Seen from across the Lake in the Kurpark 1839
D28476
Turner Bequest CCXC 63 a
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 100 x 163 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Wis’ bottom left; ‘26 [?SW...]’ top towards right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Wiesbaden is first documented in 829 AD with the name Wisibada, meaning ‘bathing place in the meadows’, a name which makes reference to the plentiful thermal springs and spas that turned the city into a celebrated tourist attraction.1 By the time of Turner’s visit, the author Bartholomew Stritch, recounting his visit to Wiesbaden in the early 1840s, writes that the population of Wiesbaden was ‘augmented by several thousand... during the bathing season, from June to the end of September’ comprised of visitors ‘of all ranks of the wealthier classes from every part of Europe’.2
In this drawing Turner depicts the Kursaal, the assembly rooms, opposite the lake at Kur Park (‘Cure Park’). The rooms are described by Stritch as:
A vast and elegantly fitted up establishment, containing within its walls a special dining hall, a splendid ball room, gambling rooms &c., while behind is a wide extent of flower gardens and ornamental pleasure grounds... In the principal saloon of the Kursaal...are planted two roulette tables (unless on ball nights) and in the adjoining rooms are an equal number of Rouge et Noir tables... From 11 o’clock in the morning till 1 o’clock... and during the entire of the evening...these centres of temptation, are encircled by an eager crows of various classes, and both sexes, all mute with attention to the chances and changes of the game, the silence being broken only by the monotonous and oft recurring cry of, faites votre jeu Messieurs, or rouge gagne et la couleur perd, uttered by the dealers, and the clink of the gold and silver coin, as it is ranked by the croupiers.3
Stritch advises that the Kurpark offers a ‘more pleasing scene’ than the casinos of the Kursaal, where:
Hundreds of well dressed and good humoured looking Germans, with a plentiful sprinkling of strangers from all parts of Europe, are either sauntering through the shady walks, or seated at little tables under the trees, taking coffee, ices, liquers, &c...4

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

1
‘Wiesbaden’, Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/643352/Wiesbaden, accessed 25 July 2013
2
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.88.
3
Ibid, pp.90–1.
4
Ibid. p.91.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Kursaal, Wiesbaden, Seen from across the Lake in the Kurpark 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-the-kursaal-wiesbaden-seen-from-across-the-lake-in-the-r1150759, accessed 28 April 2025.