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

This slight and roughly rendered sketch depicts the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, or Festung Ehrenbreitstein, crowning a lofty ridge overlooking the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle Rivers. A citadel has dominated this site on the east bank of the Rhine opposite Koblenz since the eleventh century.1 Besieged by the French during their revolutionary wars, it was later expanded under the orders of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III between 1817 and 1828 to guard the middle Rhine region. A figure can be seen at the foot of the cliff sailing a long river barge which is similar to the Rhine passenger boats shown on Tate D28611–D28612; Turner Bequest CCXCI 38a–39.