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

Employing a similarly rich and vivid colour palette as Tate D20249; Turner Bequest CCXXI P, here Turner depicts Luxembourg with the fortified Rham plateau extending diagonally in the foreground and the Rocher du Bock, cloaked in an ethereal mist, across the centre. The Grünewald is suggested at right towards the distance.

The scene largely derives from two pencil sketches in the Givet, Mézières, Verdun, Metz, Luxemburg and Trèves sketchbook of 1839 (Tate D28268, D28270; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVIII 57a, 58a). However, as Cecilia Powell points out, ‘much has been omitted’ from the preparatory drawings and ‘much added’ to the gouache ‘from the storehouse of Turner’s imagination’. ¹ Embellishments are found, for example, at bottom left, where a parade of soldiers are depicted shouldering gleaming spears and marching on a diagonal path carved into the edge of the Rham ridge.

For other of Turner’s 1839 gouaches of Luxembourg see Tate D20244–D20245, D20247–D20249, D20264, D20270, D20273, D20284–D20285, N05240; Turner Bequest CCXXI K–CCXXI L, CCXXI N–CCXXI P, CCXXII E, CCXXII K, CCXXII N, CCXXII Y–CCXXII Z.

Verso:
Inscribed with white chalk or gouache ‘17’ at centre; with pencil ‘17a’ at centre towards left and ‘33’ scribbled out at centre right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCXXI M’ bottom centre and inscribed in pencil ‘CCXXI M’ centre towards bottom.