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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Distant View of Rolandseck, Nonnenwerth and the Drachenfels, Looking down the River Rhine 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Distant View of Rolandseck, Nonnenwerth and the Drachenfels, Looking down the River Rhine’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 27 Verso:
A Distant View of Rolandseck, Nonnenwerth and the Drachenfels, Looking down the River Rhine 1840
D30509
Turner Bequest CCCIII 26v
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark (countermark): indecipherable maker’s name
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Not mentioned in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory,1 likely by an oversight among similar adjacent subjects, this drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. As identified by Cecilia Powell,2 it shows a view towards Rolandseck, Nonnenwerth island and the Drachenfels hill on the Rhine, looking north down the river; compare the background of the sketch on folio 28 recto opposite (D30510; Turner Bequest CCCIII 27).
Powell has noted that Turner neared the end of this tour following ‘the familiar route of the Rhine between Mainz and Cologne. He almost certainly travelled by steamer, ... sketching most of the well-known sights perfunctorily as he passed.’3 Given that this sketchbook was used in reverse of its subsequent foliation, she has specified the overall range of this phase as ‘TB CCCIII 68v–20v; 11r’,4 indicating folios 12 recto and 21 verso–69 verso (D30479, D30497–D30592; Turner Bequest CCCIII 20a–68a); see this book’s Introduction for the full itinerary of this part of the journey.
For other Rolandseck and Drachenfels views in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 23 recto (D30500; CCCIII 22); and for Nonnenwerth, under folio 25 verso (D30505; CCCIII 24a).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.979.
2
Powell 1995, p.246.
3
Ibid., p.72.
4
Ibid., p.82 note 70.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Distant View of Rolandseck, Nonnenwerth and the Drachenfels, Looking down the River Rhine 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-distant-view-of-rolandseck-nonnenwerth-and-the-drachenfels-r1196267, accessed 20 September 2024.