Joseph Mallord William Turner Ringgenberg Castle, Lake Brienz 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Ringgenberg Castle, Lake Brienz 1802
D04539
Turner Bequest LXXIV 46
Turner Bequest LXXIV 46
Pencil, black chalk and white gouache on greyish-buff laid paper, 213 x 284 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXIV 46’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LXXIV 46’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1974
Turner 1775–1851, Royal Academy, London, November 1974–March 1975 (59, as ‘A Castle on a Wooded Promontory by a Lake’).
1976
Turner und die Schweiz, Kunsthaus, Zürich, October 1976–January 1977 (3).
1979
Turner’s First Visit to the Continent: Watercolours from the Turner Bequest Loaned by the British Museum, Tate Gallery, London, July–December 1979 (no catalogue).
1983
J.M.W. Turner: Dibujos y acuarelas del Museo Británico, exhibition catalogue, Museo del Prado, Madrid, February–March 1983 (12).
1986
Turner Exhibition, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, August–October 1986, Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto, October–November 1986 (58).
1990
Turner’s Papers: A Study of the Manufacture, Selection and Use of his Drawing Papers 1787–1820, Tate Gallery, London, October 1990–January 1991 (31).
1998
Turner in the Alps 1802, Tate Gallery, London, November 1998–February 1999, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, March–June 1999 (62).
2001
William Turner: Licht und Farbe, Museum Folkwang, Essen, September 2001–January 2002, Kunsthaus Zürich, February–May 2002 (41).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.199, LXXIV 46, as ‘Castle on a lake’.
1974
Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.46, as ‘A Castle on a Wooded Promontary by a Lake’.
1974
Gerald Wilkinson, The Sketches of Turner, R.A. 1802–20: Genius of the Romantic, London 1974, pp.43–4 reproduced in colour.
1976
John Russell and Andrew Wilton, Turner in Switzerland, Zurich 1976, p.136.
1976
Andrew Wilton, Turner und die Schweiz, exhibition catalogue, Kunsthaus, Zürich 1976 (no individual catalogue entry).
1977
Gerald Wilkinson, Turner Sketches 1789–1820, London 1977, p.93 reproduced in colour.
1979
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, pp.90 reproduced (as from ‘LXXOV’), 344.
1981
Andrew Wilton, in Maurice Guillaud and others, Turner en France: aquarelles, peintures, dessins, gravures, carnets de croquis / Turner in France: Watercolours, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, Sketchbooks, exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris 1981, pp.30–1, 38–9 note 26.
1983
Lindsay Stainton and Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: Dibujos y acuarelas del Museo Británico, exhibition catalogue, Museo del Prado, Madrid 1983.
1986
Haruki Yaegashi, Martin Butlin, Evelyn Joll and others, Turner Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo 1986, cat. 58 reproduced.
1990
Peter Bower, Turner’s Papers: A Study of the Manufacture, Selection and Use of his Drawing Papers 1787–1820, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1990, p.82 reproduced in colour.
1998
David Blayney Brown, Turner in the Alps 1802, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1998, pp.172–3 reproduced in colour, as ‘Ringgenberg Castle, Lake of Brienz’.
1999
David Blayney Brown, Turner et les Alpes 1802, exhibition catalogue, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny 1999, pp.172–3 reproduced in colour.
2001
Andrew Wilton, Inge Bodesohn-Vogel and Helena Robinson, William Turner: Licht und Farbe, exhibition catalogue, Museum Folkwang, Essen 2001, pp.110 reproduced in colour, 294 reproduced.
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’
David Blayney Brown
September 2011
How to cite
David Blayney Brown, ‘Ringgenberg Castle, Lake Brienz 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2014, https://www