J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Leyen Burg (Schloss von der Leyen), Gondorf, on the River Mosel 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Leyen Burg (Schloss von der Leyen), Gondorf, on the River Mosel’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Leyen Burg (Schloss von der Leyen), Gondorf, on the River Mosel 1840
D28999
Turner Bequest CCXCII 50v
Pencil on grey wove paper, 140 x 195 mm
Inscribed in pencil ‘CCXCII 50’ bottom centre
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This pencil drawing is not mentioned in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.1 The unrelated River Mosel view on the recto, D28998 (Turner Bequest CCXCII 50), was part of one of the long-running touring Sixth Loan Collection from the Bequest, and this side was likely inaccessible at that time.
Cecilia Powell noted that the subject is ‘probably ... the Leyen Burg at Gondorf’,2 which seems correct, apparently looking south-west from the river, with the eastern ranges of the castle (today within the municipality of Kobern-Gondorf) above its bastions. Bizarrely, the main road now running along the bank passes straight through the two main blocks here, each having had its ground floor hollowed out between its intact riverside and inner façades.
Compare a pencil sketch in the 1839 First Mossel and Oxford sketchbook (Tate D28305; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 8). Other views from the river are noted under D40319 (CCXCII 2 verso), a contemporary pencil outline showing the landward side on the back of another Mosel colour study. For the full range of Mosel subjects associated with the present tour, see the Introduction to this subsection.
1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.941.
2
Powell 1995, p.150.
Technical notes:
Cecilia Powell has noted this as one of the many sheets of grey 1829 Bally, Ellen and Steart paper used on Turner’s 1840 tour, neatly torn as eighths or sixteenths of the overall sheet, with dimensions of around 190 x 280 or 140 x 190 mm, and variously worked with pencil, watercolour and gouache; see the technical notes in the overall Introduction for others.1
More specifically, the present section ‘originally formed part of the same sheet as eight others of the same size which bear pencil drawings of the Rhine on both recto and verso. These include views of Bonn, the Godesburg, Rolandseck, the Drachenfels, Hammerstein and Burg Rheineck (TB CCCXLI 194–209 [Tate D33899–D33914, of which D33903, D33904 and D33906 are blank]). The sheet is watermarked BE&S / 1829.’2 These subjects are also catalogued in this subsection.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Ibid., p.145.
2
Ibid., pp.150–1.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Leyen Burg (Schloss von der Leyen), Gondorf, on the River Mosel 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-leyen-burg-schloss-von-der-leyen-gondorf-on-the-river-r1196409, accessed 14 July 2025.