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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner Boppard, Looking down the River Rhine to the Franciscan Church, Ritter-Schwalbach Haus, Sandtor and Town Walls; Burg Sterrenberg and Burg Liebenstein ('The Brothers'), Looking down the Rhine from the West Bank 1817

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Boppard, Looking down the River Rhine to the Franciscan Church, Ritter-Schwalbach Haus, Sandtor and Town Walls; Burg Sterrenberg and Burg Liebenstein ('The Brothers'), Looking down the Rhine from the West Bank’ 1817
Folio 59 Verso:
Boppard, Looking down the River Rhine to the Franciscan Church, Ritter–Schwalbach Haus, Sandtor and Town Walls; Burg Sterrenberg and Burg Liebenstein (‘The Brothers’), Looking down the Rhine from the West Bank 1817
D12883
Turner Bequest CLX 93a
Pencil on white wove paper, 94 x 150 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Lavenstein’ or ‘Liebenstein’ bottom left, descending vertically, and ‘Old Wall’, ‘Wall’, Boat’ and ‘Linen drying’ from left to right within main image
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner visited Boppard during his walk south along the west bank of the Rhine on 23 August 1817. He drew two views from outside the town walls, looking back downstream; see also folio 60 opposite (D12813; Turner Bequest CLX 58). The larger drawing on this page, turned horizontally, records from left to right the twin–spired parish church, the turreted Franciscan church, the medieval Ritter–Schwalbach–Haus, the Sandtor gate and the mole. Only the lower part of the gate survives today, and the mole was swept away by storm floods some thirty years after Turner saw it in 1817. The drawing became the basis of the watercolour Boppard (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut)1 sold by Turner to Walter Fawkes later in 1817, which Turner must also have planned to repeat around 1819–20 for W.B Cooke or another patron, as a separate colour study of the same subject exists (Tate D25382; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 259).
Overlapping the drawing of Boppard on the left and made with the page turned upright is a smaller sketch of Burg Sterrenberg and Burg Liebenstein, the two ruined castles known as the Bruderburgen or ‘Brothers’ after the rival siblings who built them on the east bank of the Rhine opposite Boppard. This closely anticipates another Fawkes watercolour, Bruderburgen on the Rhine (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).2 For adjacent views of the castles see folio 60 recto opposite (D12813; Turner Bequest CLX 58), where again combined with Boppard, and 61 (D12815; Turner Bequest CLX 59).
See notes to the recto (D12882; Turner Bequest CLX 93) for the repositioning of this page as folio 59 with this side as the verso. Placed thus it faces other sketches of ‘The Brothers’ and Boppard (D12813; Turner Bequest CLX 58).

David Blayney Brown
June 2025

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, pp.375–6 no.652, reproduced.
2
Ibid., p.375 no.651, reproduced.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Boppard, Looking down the River Rhine to the Franciscan Church, Ritter–Schwalbach Haus, Sandtor and Town Walls; Burg Sterrenberg and Burg Liebenstein (‘The Brothers’), Looking down the Rhine from the West Bank 1817’, catalogue entry, June 2025, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, June 2026, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/boppard-looking-down-the-river-rhine-to-the-franciscan-church-ritter-schwalbach-haus-r1212184, accessed 31 July 2026.