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

This colour study reprises the subject of the 1817 watercolour Boppard (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven),1 which Turner had sold to Walter Fawkes among many other River Rhine subjects soon after his return from the Continent (see the Introduction to this section).2 Assuming a second finished version was ever made, it is now untraced and the present sheet is the only evidence of such an intention. Turner only sets out the basic structure and mood here, with the wall and Sandtor gateway silhouetted against the rain-swept hills downstream to the north-west, omitting the steeples of the town to the left and the busy quayside scene with figures and boats in the foreground. The scene is now much changed, only the lower part of the gateway surviving, hidden by later trees and buildings.3

Watercolours of German scenes echoing the Fawkes series were produced for various patrons around the turn of the decade; Cecilia Powell has directly related the present subject to a projected series of thirty-six planned for a book of Rhine views planned in 1819 but soon abandoned owing to the chance appearance of a similar scheme from another publisher (see the Introduction to this section).4

Powell notes that the present work shares a palette of ‘blues, yellows and soft greens’ with a contemporary colour study of Burg Sooneck and Bacharach (Tate D25242; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 120),5 some twenty miles to the south-east up the river.

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘63’ right of centre, ascending vertically; inscribed in pencil ‘CCLXIII | 259’ bottom right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCLXIII – 259’ towards bottom left.