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

The Burg Bischofstein’s ‘tall cylindrical donjon tower’, with its ‘well-defined white streak’, is shown to full effect in this sketch, perched atop a craggy ledge.1 Adjacent to the castle is ‘the ruins of an old chapel, surrounded by brambles’ and lower down, the Pauluskapelle, a Gothic chapel decorated with ‘ancient ornaments and mitred windows’.2 The pathway leading past these historic monuments, Quin writes, was strewn with ‘small shrines, and fragments of... images of saints, shewing that this was a place where pilgrimages were performed in other days’.3 As Turner’s rendering of this ruined scene shows, a heavy air of ‘silence and solitude... prevail’ at Bischofstein.4

For other depictions of the Burg Bischofstein in this sketchbook see Tate D28562–D28563, D28565–D28566; Turner Bequest CCXCI 13a–14, 15–15a.