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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern Germany, the Elbe and Prague ... > Prague, Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Rhine ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Town on the Lower Rhine; Burg Ehrenfels and the Mäuseturm, Looking Upstream to Bingen 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Town on the Lower Rhine; Burg Ehrenfels and the Mäuseturm, Looking Upstream to Bingen’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Recto:
Town on the Lower Rhine; Burg Ehrenfels and the Mäuseturm, Looking Upstream to Bingen 1835
D30651
Turner Bequest CCCIV 11
Pencil on cream laid paper, 118 x 190 mm
Watermark ‘[jan h]onig’ | ‘[j]h&z’
Stamped in black ‘CCCIV–11’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The principal sketch shows a stretch of the Rhine near Bingen, Germany, with two medieval fortifications: the Burg Ehrenfels atop the ridge at left and the Mäuseturm on the river’s edge at right. See also Tate D12829, D12835, D12840–D12841, D12944–D12945, D12948–D12949, D28492–D28493, D29598, D29737, D29739–D29742, D29744–D29745, D30583–D30584, D30586, D30589, D30644–D30645, D30648; Turner Bequest CLX 66, 69, 71a–72, CLXI 33a–34, 35a–36, CCXC 71a–72, CCXCVI 2a, 72a, 73a–75, 76–76a, CCCIII 63a–64a, 65a, 67, CCCIV 7a–8, 9a.
An unidentified town on the Rhine is also depicted, orientated inversely to the previous sketch. Turner has employed the dashed line seen at right in other drawings as shorthand for a flying bridge (see, for example, Tate D12855, D28345, D28391, D28610; Turner Bequest CLX 79, CCLXXXIX 28, CCXC 21, CCXCI 38).

Alice Rylance-Watson
November 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Town on the Lower Rhine; Burg Ehrenfels and the Mäuseturm, Looking Upstream to Bingen 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-town-on-the-lower-rhine-burg-ehrenfels-and-the-mauseturm-r1187032, accessed 16 April 2024.