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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Rotterdam and Rhine sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bingen from the River Rhine, with the Mäuseturm and Burg Ehrenfels Downstream 1833

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bingen from the River Rhine, with the Mäuseturm and Burg Ehrenfels Downstream’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 13 Recto:
Bingen from the River Rhine, with the Mäuseturm and Burg Ehrenfels Downstream 1833
D32566
Turner Bequest CCCXXII 14
Pencil on white laid paper, 105 x 170 mm
Partial watermark: front legs and head of rearing unicorn
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘14’ top right, ascending vertically (smudged and faint)
Stamped in black ‘CCCXXII – 14’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the view is to the west down the River Rhine off Bingen, with the spires of St Martin’s Basilica on the left, the slender tower of the Mäuseturm midstream near the centre, and the ruins of Burg Ehrenfels on the slopes opposite, overlooking the right-hand bend beyond the town. The prospect is effectively a continuation to the right of the horizontal view of Bingen and Burg Klopp drawn the other way around on folio 12 verso opposite (D32565; CCCXXII 13a), where the spires appear on the right. Compare one of the sketches on Tate D29745 (Turner Bequest CCXCVI 76a) in the Brussels up to Mannheim – Rhine sketchbook used on the outward leg of this tour, and the distance of another on folio 11 verso of the present book (D32563; CCCXXII 12a).
For other views around Bingen, and the subject’s context among the many rapid sketches made in this book while passing homeward down the familiar river, see under D32565. The present subject roughly corresponds with one of the watercolours Turner made of the vicinity in 1817, The Binger Loch and Mäuseturm (private collection).1 There is a more direct view of Bingen on the verso (D32567), closer studies of Burg Ehrenfels and the Mäuseturm on folios 59 recto and verso respectively (D32655–D32656; CCCXXII 60, 60a), and possibly another of Burg Ehrenfels on folio 58 recto (D32653; CCCXXII 59).

Matthew Imms
November 2019

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.378 no.679, as ‘Bingen Lorch and the Mausethurm’, reproduced.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Bingen from the River Rhine, with the Mäuseturm and Burg Ehrenfels Downstream 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-bingen-from-the-river-rhine-with-the-mauseturm-and-burg-r1204032, accessed 22 July 2024.