Catalogue entry
This slight and roughly rendered sketch depicts the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, or Festung Ehrenbreitstein, which crowns the lofty heights in the background. A citadel has dominated this site on the east bank of the Rhine opposite the town of Koblenz since the eleventh century.
1 Besieged by the French during their revolutionary wars, it was later expanded under the orders of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III between 1817 and 1828 to guard the middle Rhine region.
Ehrenbreitstein was described by Bartholomew Stritch as a ‘gigantic and almost “cloud capt” citadel’ during his 1845 tour of the Moselle and Rhine regions.
2 The town of Koblenz, sketched in summary profile in the foreground and middle distance, occupied ‘an advantageous and beautiful position’ at the ‘confluence of the two rivers’.
3Part of the drawing of Mayen on folio 43 verso (Tate
D28436; Turner Bequest CCXC 43a) extends onto this page, at the gutter of the sketchbook.
For other drawings of Ehrenbreitstein and Koblenz in this sketchbook see Tate
D28351–
D28353,
D28356,
D28438–D28447,
D28530–D28533; Turner Bequest CCXC 1–2, 3a, 44a–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
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