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

With the sketchbook orientated in accordance with the foliation, here Turner pictures the Rhine valley with a boat sailing past a small house on the right, and below, a riverboat carrying with a group of passengers. The central sketch shows the ancient town of Andernach, and features the Romanesque Basilica of St Mary Assumption and the medieval watchtower. The onion dome of the Archbishop’s Castle and the spire of the Annunziatenkloster are close by, situated parallel to a parade of tall trees at the riverside. A similar view, though showing the bank in the opposite direction, downstream, is recorded in an 1817 sketchbook on Tate D12881; Turner Bequest CLX 92v. For further depictions of Andernach, see Tate D12655–D12656, D12794–D12797, D12854–D12856, D12880; Turner Bequest CLIX 79a–80, CLX 48a–51, 78a–79a, 92. See also three finished watercolour drawings of 1817 (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Mass; and Johannesburg Art Gallery) and a later drawing of about 1840 in the Fine Arts Collection of the University of Melbourne, Australia.1

The remaining sketches are squared off and have been drawn with the book turned horizontally. Rendered with agile and crisp line, they depict the steep cliffs of the Rhine valley between the villages of Hammerstein and Rheineck, both of which are dominated by imposing ruined castles (see Tate D19839; Turner Bequest CCXVI 144a).