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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Andernach, Looking up the River Rhine 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Andernach, Looking up the River Rhine’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 35 Recto:
Andernach, Looking up the River Rhine 1840
D30524
Turner Bequest CCCIII 34
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark: Tree of Liberty
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘34’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCIII – 34’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. As identified by Cecilia Powell,1 it shows Andernach on the west bank of the Rhine, looking upriver to the east, dominated by the medieval Runder Turm (Round Tower), with the twin spires of the Maria Himmelfahrt church to its south.
Powell has noted that Turner neared the end of this tour following ‘the familiar route of the Rhine between Mainz and Cologne. He almost certainly travelled by steamer, ... sketching most of the well-known sights perfunctorily as he passed.’2 Given that this sketchbook was used in reverse of its subsequent foliation, she has specified the overall range of this phase as ‘TB CCCIII 68v–20v; 11r’,3 indicating folios 12 recto and 21 verso–69 verso (D30479, D30497–D30592; Turner Bequest CCCIII 20a–68a); see this book’s Introduction for the full itinerary of this part of the journey.
There are other views around Andernach on folios 35 verso–37 verso (D30525–D30529; CCCIII 34a–CCCIII 36a). See also the 1817 Itinerary Rhine Tour, Waterloo and Rhine and Rhine sketchbooks (respectively Tate D12655–D12656, D12674; Turner Bequest CLIX 79a, 80, 89; D12794–D12799, D12854, D12856, D12880, D12881; CLX 48a–51, 78a, 79, 79a, 92, 92v; D12950–D12951; CLXI 36a–37), the 1824 Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook (D19838–D19839; CCXVI 144, 144a), the 1830s Rhine (between Cologne and Mayence) also Moselle and Aix-la-Chapelle sketchbook (D28710, D28749; CCXCI a 28, 48), the 1833 Brussels up to Mannheim – Rhine sketchbook (D29703, D29716; CCXCVI 55a, 62), and the 1843 Dover, Rhine and Innsbruck sketchbook (D31231; CCCIX 5a). There are also three undated pencil studies on grey paper (D33699, D33726, D34037; CCCXLI 20, 47, 318).
Turner made two watercolours in 1817: Andernach (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven);4 and The Watch Tower at Andernach (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts).5 There is another of about 1819, Neuwied and Weise Thurn [sic], with Hoche’s Monument, on the Rhine, Looking towards Andernach (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh),6 an early 1840s pencil drawing, Castle Andernach (University of Michigan Museum of Art), and an untraced 1840s watercolour.7

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Powell 1995, p.246.
2
Ibid., p.72.
3
Ibid., p.82 note 70.
4
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.376 no.662, reproduced.
5
Ibid., no.663, as ‘Roman Tower at Andernach’, pl.130.
6
Ibid., pp.379–80 no.689, reproduced.
7
Ibid., p.458 no.1318.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Andernach, Looking up the River Rhine 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-andernach-looking-up-the-river-rhine-r1196282, accessed 05 April 2026.