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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Brussels up to Mannheim - Rhine ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches of the Seven Hills and the Drachenfels from the Rhine; A Cliff 1833

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Sketches of the Seven Hills and the Drachenfels from the Rhine; A Cliff’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Recto:
Two Sketches of the Seven Hills and the Drachenfels from the Rhine; A Cliff 1833
D29681
Turner Bequest CCXCVI 44
Pencil on cream wove paper, 113 x 185 mm
Inscribed in pencil ‘L[...]’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The two landscape sketches show the Drachenfels (or ‘Dragon’s Rock’) in the Siebengebirge (Seven Hills) mountain range located on the Rhine between Königswinter and Bad Honnef. The ruined castle seen atop the mountain is the Burg Drachenfels, built between 1138 and 1167 by Archbishop Arnold I of Cologne.1 Both mountain and castle gained popularity in the Romantic period, appearing in the Canto III of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
Other sketches of the Drachenfels are found in the Itinerary Rhine Tour and Waterloo and Rhine sketchbooks of 1817 (Tate D12663, D12680, D12756, D12757, D12768–D12775; Turner Bequest CLIX 83a, 92, CLX 29a, 30, 35a–39). Later views include Tate D28616, D28617, D28621–D28623, D28625, D28626, D30500–D30510, D30513; Turner Bequest CCXCI 41, 41a, 43a–44a, 45a, 46, CCCIII 22–27, 28a. See also Tate impression T06180, an engraving of Turner’s The Drachenfels (Manchester City Galleries) published in 1833.
The squared-off sketch at bottom right shows cliffs on the Rhine and is inscribed ‘L[...]’. This inscription may connect this sketch to a view of Linz depicted on Tate D29682; Turner Bequest CCXCVI 44a.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2017

1
Burg Drachenfels’, Siebenbirge, accessed 13 August 2013 http://www.siebengebirge.de/

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Two Sketches of the Seven Hills and the Drachenfels from the Rhine; A Cliff 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-two-sketches-of-the-seven-hills-and-the-drachenfels-from-the-r1202979, accessed 10 June 2025.