Ruined Castle among Trees; ?Küssaberg near Lauchringen

1802

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Lake Thun Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 156 x 201 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D04672
Turner Bequest LXXVI 17 a

Catalogue entry

Finberg’s reading of the inscription, unclear as this was and complicated further by Turner’s partial correction, cannot be upheld. Turner did not go anywhere near Glarus in 1802; to do so he would have had to make a long detour east and north of Fluelen instead of his southerly expedition along the Reuss valley. He did however pass by the twelfth-century castle of Küssaberg, just south of Lauchringen, on his way home along the Rhine between Schaffhausen and Säckingen, and noted its name inside the back cover of this book. Finberg associated this second annotation with the interior of a kitchen drawn on folio 68 (D04728), but there is probably no connection. The inscriptions on the present leaf do however seem to refer to the castle, when one allows for the vagaries of Turner’s spelling. Finberg compared a sketch on folio 15 verso now identified as Baden (D04668).

David Blayney Brown
March 2004

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