'Ehrenbreitstein', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Ehrenbreitstein

Date 1841

MediumWatercolour and pen and ink on paper

Dimensionssupport: 237 x 300 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D36206

Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 346

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Display caption

Unlike the gouache studies in this room, nos.128-134 were executed in the course of one of Turner's tours when he must have stayed in a hotel on the Rhine front at Coblenz looking out at Ehrenbreitstein. Under the setting sun the fortress and river assumed an ever-changing succession of colours which he recorded in swift watercolour washes and bold flourishes of pen and ink, folding and tearing his paper hastily as he went along. In no.128 his viewpoint is downstream of the bridge of boats, but the latter is visible in all the other scenes, sometimes with a few boats moved aside to allow the passage of a raft or steamer.

August 2004