Joseph Mallord William Turner

Finberg listed this as one of a further five drawings associated with this sketchbook which ‘had also been mounted, but have not been exhibited. Their titles, if they had any, have been cut off.’

This view of Ringgenberg Castle on the north bank of Lake Brienz was not made during Turner’s boat trip on the lake. Instead it is an intermediate composition study based on pencil sketches in the smaller Rhine, Strassburg and Oxford sketchbook which would have been more convenient to take with him (Tate D04753, D04761; Turner Bequest LXXVII 17a, 23a). The hatching and shading of black chalk in the silhouette of the castle and its reflection on the surface of the water, and the whitening of the sky are more considered than spontaneous. The effect may be of moonlight, recalling the late end of a day out on a lake. Turner also made a colour study (Tate D04896; Turner Bequest LXXX C).

Among the five finished watercolours of Lake Brienz to come out of Turner’s drawings from 1802, one of Chateau de Rinkenberg, on the Lac de Brientz, Switzerland was made in 1809 for Walter Fawkes (Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio).1

Verso:

Blank, inscribed by a later hand in pencil ‘22’