Catalogue entry
Finberg tentatively described the subject of this sunlit watercolour study as ‘River, with trees and castle on hill (? Rosenau)’;
1 the identification was confirmed by Andrew Wilton.
2 Turner was in Coburg, then capital of the German Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, between 17 and 20 September 1840, and made many drawings of the town and its surroundings in the
Venice; Passau to Würzburg sketchbook; see under Tate
D31278 (Turner Bequest CCCX 1a). He also went out to see Schloss Rosenau, in countryside beside the River Itz about four miles to the north-east (see under
D31318; CCCX 22),
3 making several of sketches of this relatively modest house and its elevated setting among trees above the river.
These informed his large oil painting of
Schloss Rosenau, Seat of H.R.H. Prince Albert of Coburg, near Coburg, Germany, exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool).
4 Britain’s young Queen Victoria had married her cousin Prince Albert, who was born at the castle, in London on 10 February 1840, a few months before Turner’s tour. As Coburg and Rosenau involved a definite if minor departure from his ongoing homeward route, this suggests that Turner was already considering such a subject, although if he had hoped for royal patronage he was to be disappointed.
5As Cecilia Powell has observed: ‘It was not Turner’s usual practice to make watercolour studies as intermediate preparatory works ... However, this work provides a rare example of him doing just this’, being based on
D31318, and ‘testifies to the great care with which Turner planned the painting’.
6 (See the ‘Studies Related to Oil Paintings c.1819–46’ section of the present catalogue for a few other instances.) She has itemised the key aspects of the composition’s three-stage development:
In the coloured sketch Turner has already relieved his scene of the rather congested area of trees and architecture to the right of the Schloss which his pencil sketch had carefully recorded on the spot. The left-hand part, however, relies closely on the pencil sketch and does not include the tall tree with the silver trunk that adds such grandeur to the final painting. The stream is still confined to the middle distance and left-hand foreground and none of the human participants has yet made an appearance.
7
Matthew Imms
September 2018
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