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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Fortifications on Hill ?Ehrenbreitstein 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fortifications on Hill ?Ehrenbreitstein’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 169 Recto:
Fortifications on Hill ?Ehrenbreitstein 1824
D19880
Turner Bequest CCXVI 163
Pencil on white wove paper, 78 x 118 mm
Watermark ‘[smith &] allnut | [18]22’
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘163’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–163’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This rather scrappy and rapidly executed sketch shows a ridge with fortifications atop it and possibly a bridge or bridge of boats to its left. This sketch is part of a short series of jottings which are all of a piece in terms of handling and subject matter (see Tate D19876–D19879, D19882; Turner Bequest CCXVI 161–162a, 165). Cecilia Powell believes these sketches to have been taken as Turner made his way by canal boat from Ghent through Bruges to Ostend.1 The topography and form of the fortification, however, do not appear Flemish to this cataloguer; rather, they appear reminiscent of the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein at Koblenz, a citadel overlooking the confluence of the Moselle and Rhine Rivers in Germany.
1
Powell 1991, p.43 note 32 [p.60]
Verso:
Blank

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Fortifications on Hill ?Ehrenbreitstein 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-fortifications-on-hill-ehrenbreitstein-r1174675, accessed 19 April 2024.