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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Schloss Stolzenfels and Kapellen from the Junction of the Lahn and the Rhine 1824

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Recto:
Schloss Stolzenfels and Kapellen from the Junction of the Lahn and the Rhine 1824
D20158
Turner Bequest CCXVIII 20
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 220 x 291 mm
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘20’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVIII–20’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Standing at the junction of the Lahn and Rhine Rivers at Lahnstein, Turner records a detailed view of the village of Kapellen overlooked by the magnificent Castle Stolzenfels. Completed in 1259, the Schloss was constructed by the Archbishop of Trier initially to levy tolls on the Rhine and was later expanded to become the residence of the Koblenz office of the Electorate of Trier.1 Following its siege and occupation by Swedish and French troops in the seventeenth century the castle was left in ruin and in 1836 gifted to the Prussian Prince Royal, Friedrich Wilhlem by the city of Koblenz.2 Here Turner captures Stolzenfels in dereliction, a sprawling and crumbling complex. Further down the hill towards Kapellen is the Church of St Menas: a Romanesque church consecrated in 1328 on the site of the tenth-century ‘capella Sewardi’.3 St Menas was rebuilt by the architect Johann Claudius Lassaulx in 1833.4
1
‘Schloss Stolzenfels’, Koblenz-Touristik, accessed 13 December 2013, http://www.koblenz-touristik.de/en/places-of-interest/buildings-and-places/schloss-stolzenfels.html
2
Ibid.
3
Johann Samuel Ersch and J.G. Gruber, ¿Allgemeine Enzyklopaedie der Wissenschaften und Kuenste in alphabetischer Folge von genannten Schriftstellern¿, Leipzig 1826, p.122.
4
‘St Menas Kirche’, Stolzenfels, accessed 13 December 2013, http://www.stolzenfels.de/html/st__menas_kirche.html
Verso:
Blank

Alice Rylance-Watson
December 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Schloss Stolzenfels and Kapellen from the Junction of the Lahn and the Rhine 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-schloss-stolzenfels-and-kapellen-from-the-junction-of-the-r1174897, accessed 25 April 2024.