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

With swift, abbreviated strokes and dashes of pencil, here Turner suggests the arched structure of the ruins of the Roman baths at Trier (Trèves) . The profile of the fifteenth-century Church of St Gangolf with its lofty four-storey steeple can be seen in the background.1 The ancient city lies on the banks of the Moselle in Germany’s province of Rhineland-Palatinate, close to the border with Luxembourg. There is similar sketch of the imperial baths on folio 44 recto (Tate D28247; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 44).

For further depictions of Trier in this sketchbook see Tate D28203, D28206, D28207, D28244, D28246, D28249, D28250, D28256, D28258–D28260, D28263, D28264; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 19, 20a, 21, 42a, 43a, 45a, 46, 50, 51–52, 54a, 55). The city is also depicted in earlier sketchbooks associated with Turner’s 1824 tour of the region; see the Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook (Tate D19725, D19726, D19728–D19730, D19732–D19743; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 88a, 89, 90–91, 92–97a; the Huy and Dinant sketchbook (Tate D20091, D20111, D20115; Turner Bequest CCXVII 5, 17a, 21; the Trèves and Rhine sketchbook (Tate D20141, D20142, D20145, D20146, D20148, D20149–D20154; Turner Bequest CCXVIII 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11–16. See also two gouache and watercolour drawings of the city: one of the Porta Nigra (Tate D20230; Turner Bequest CCXX W) and the other of Trier from the west (Tate D24715; Turner Bequest CCLIX 150).