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

In these six slight and diminutive sketches, Turner records a variety of views at Kobern, Gondorf and Niederfell. The two uppermost drawings and the penultimate sketch from rear show Kobern, a settlement presided over by ‘two ruined castles, that like gigantic sentinels, seem to keep watch and ward over the little town’, the Victorian author Bartholomew Stritch writes.1 One of these castles, the twelfth-century Oberburg (Upper Castle), is visible in Turner’s sketches of Kobern, as well as the Oberburg’s reliquary chapel dedicated to St Mattias.2 Constructed in the Romanesque style, the chapel was erected for the purpose of housing the head of the Apostle Mattias. The relic was reportedly plundered by Henry II of Kobern during the Siege of Damietta of the Fifth Crusade (1218–19).3

The central and lower sketches (excluding the above-mentioned drawing of Kobern) show Gondorf (‘Condorff’) and the village of Niederfell. The latter of these settlements is dominated by the Niederburg (Lower Castle), the second feudal seat of the Isenburg-Kobern family which is twinned with the Oberburg.

For additional views of Kobern and Niederfell in this sketchbook see Tate D19813–D19815; Turner Bequest CCXVI 131a–132a. See also Tate D20271, D28300–D28301, D28589–D28594; Turner Bequest CCXVI 131a–132a, CCXXII L, CCLXXXIX 5a–6, CCXCI 27a–30.