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 Fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, Looking Downstream from the Town of Ehrenbreitstein, with the Heribertturm in the Foreground 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, Looking Downstream from the Town of Ehrenbreitstein, with the Heribertturm in the Foreground’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Recto:
The Fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, Looking Downstream from the Town of Ehrenbreitstein, with the Heribertturm in the Foreground 1839
D28353
Turner Bequest CCXC 2
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 100 x 163 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘2’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXC–2’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Rendered roughly in blunt pencil, Turner has depicted the artillery citadel of Ehrenbreitstein crowning lofty heights in the background. The Heribert Tower or Heribertturm is pictured summarily in the foreground. The tower and the adjacent Church of the Holy Cross is shown in a highly detailed pencil drawing of 1817 (Tate D12803; Turner Bequest CLX 53).
For other drawings of Ehrenbreitstein and Koblenz in this sketchbook see Tate D28351, D28352, D28356, D28437–D28447, D28530–D28533; Turner Bequest CCXC 1, 1a, 3a, 44–49, 88–89a. See also Enhrenbreitstein in depicted in two other sketchbooks belonging to the 1839 tour: the First Mossel and Oxford (Tate D28297, D28301, D28306, D28316, D28317; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 4, 6, 7, 8a, 13a, 14) and the Cochem to Coblenz – Home (Tate D28603, D28605–D28607; Turner Bequest CCXCI 34a, 35a–36a).
For earlier depictions of Ehrenbreitstein see the Waterloo and Rhine sketchbook of 1817 (Tate D12781–D12783, D12802–D12806, D12809; Turner Bequest CLX 42–43, 52a–54a, 56); the Rhine sketchbook of the same date (Tate D12894, D12899, D12901–D12902, D12908; Turner Bequest 7, 10, 11–11a, 15); the Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook of 1824 (Tate D19785, D19818–D19821, D19826–D19830; Turner Bequest CCXVI 117 a, 134–135a, 138–140). There are also a number of fine colour drawings depicting the fortress and neighbouring Koblenz, some of which include: Tate D24804, D24809, D24833, D36138, D36206; Turner Bequest CCLIX 239, 244, 268, CCCLXIV 285, 346.

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, Looking Downstream from the Town of Ehrenbreitstein, with the Heribertturm in the Foreground 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-fortress-of-ehrenbreitstein-looking-downstream-from-the-r1150638, accessed 13 May 2024.