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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

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
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
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
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
1
Wilton 1979, pp.343–4 no.388.
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.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-ringgenberg-castle-lake-brienz-r1146404, accessed 25 April 2024.