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 > Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Burg Rheinfels 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Burg Rheinfels’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 80 Recto:
Burg Rheinfels 1839
D28509
Turner Bequest CCXC 79 c
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 100 x 163 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘79’ followed by ‘c’ in red ink in another hand, top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXC–79c’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner depicts the grandiose architecture of the Rheinfels fortification which overlooks the Rhine valley at St. Gore. Though in a state of ruin, Turner’s suggestion of its ancient curtain and parapet walls, ramparts, towers, guardhouses, and bastions evoke Rheinfels’ historical function as a defensive stronghold of the noble family to whom it once belonged.
Rheinfels is depicted elsewhere in this sketchbook on Tate D28455–D28457, D28506, D28507, D28510; Turner Bequest CCXC 53–54, 78a, 79a, 79d. Turner recorded the castle extensively in the Rhine sketchbook of 1817 (Tate D12918–D12923, D12930–D12932, D12935–D12937, D12952–D19260; Turner Bequest CLXI 21a–24, 26–27a, 29–30, 37a–42). See also the 1841 colour sketch (private collection).1

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.459 no.1327.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Burg Rheinfels 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-burg-rheinfels-r1150792, accessed 26 April 2024.