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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > The Second Meuse-Moselle Tour 1839 > First Mossel and Oxford Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Fortress and Town of Ehrenbreitstein from Coblenz 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Fortress and Town of Ehrenbreitstein from Coblenz’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 7 Recto:
The Fortress and Town of Ehrenbreitstein from Coblenz 1839
D28303
Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 7
Pencil on white wove drawing paper, 140 x 235 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Shot’ (inverted) top centre
Inscribed in red ink ‘7’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXXIX–7’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This view of the town and fortress of Ehrenbreitstein is the single largest and most developed of any sketch taken by Turner during his 1839 tour of the Meuse-Moselle region. The prospect is expansive and highly detailed, and continues onto the folio opposite (Tate D28302; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 6a) to offer the viewer a comprehensive and almost itemised impression of Ehrenbreitstein’s topography and architecture. This rewardingly descriptive drawing was, it seems, produced in and for itself. It did not form the basis of a finished gouache drawing, as other of the 1839 Meuse-Moselle pencil sketches had done.

Alice Rylance-Watson
August 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Fortress and Town of Ehrenbreitstein from Coblenz 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-fortress-and-town-of-ehrenbreitstein-from-coblenz-r1150584, accessed 27 April 2024.