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 > Cochem to Coblenz - Home Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bonn; The Seven Hills 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bonn; The Seven Hills’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Recto:
Bonn; The Seven Hills 1839
D28624
Turner Bequest CCXCI 45
Pencil on cream laid writing paper, 100 x 156 mm
Watermarked French imperial eagle
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Bonn’ top right
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘45’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI–45’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The larger of the two drawings here is a dramatic prospect of the ‘Seven Hills’ near Bonn. The ‘Siebengebirge’ is an upland range consisting of more than forty hills, situated to the east of the Rhine and south-east of Bonn. The seven hills are: the Drachenfels, the Wolkenburg, the Petersburg, the Nonnenstromberg, the Ölberg, the Lohrberg, and the Löwenburg.1
Above the mountain panorama Turner has drawn a very slight profile of the ancient city of Bonn. For other pictures of Bonn, see the Itinerary Rhine Tour and Waterloo and Rhine sketchbooks of 1817 (Tate D12665–D12668, D12750, D12868–D12870; Turner Bequest CLIX 84a–86, CLX 26a, 85a–86a).

Alice Rylance-Watson
August 2013

1
‘Mountains and Valleys’, Rhine Dragon, accessed 14 August 2013, http://www.rhinedragon.de/mountains_valleys.html

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Bonn; The Seven Hills 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 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-bonn-the-seven-hills-r1150908, accessed 25 April 2024.