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

This slight sketch shows the tower of the ruined Godesburg castle, since restored and surrounded by Bad Godesberg, above the west bank of the Rhine near Bonn. Compare Tate D30499 (Turner Bequest CCCIII 21a) in the 1840 Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend sketchbook used on the river as the artist neared the end of the 1840 tour, under which drawings and a watercolour from the 1817 tour are noted. The subject was among those listed in broad terms by Cecilia Powell, as quoted in the technical notes below, in relation to a group of thirteen similar drawings mostly made along rural stretches of the river.

For the likely sequence of the Rhine subjects in this grouping and the wider context of the tour, see the Introduction to this subsection. The other side of the sheet is D33909 (Turner Bequest CCCXLI 204), showing Burg Rheineck, about twenty miles upriver.

Technical notes:

In discussing one of the 1840 River Mosel subjects in this subsection (Tate D28998; Turner Bequest CCXCII 50), Cecilia Powell has noted that it ‘originally formed part of the same sheet as eight others of the same size which bear pencil drawings of the Rhine on both recto and verso. These include views of Bonn, the Godesburg, Rolandseck, the Drachenfels, Hammerstein and Burg Rheineck (TB CCCXLI 194–209 [Tate D33899–D33914, of which D33903, D33904 and D33906 are blank]). The sheet is watermarked BE&S / 1829.’1 Apparently indicating that they were still joined in 1909, Finberg noted the ‘following numbers, 194–209, form [sic] part of one large sheet folded into small sections.’2

Powell has noted the many sheets of grey 1829 Bally, Ellen and Steart paper used on Turner’s 1840 tour, neatly torn as eighths or sixteenths of the overall sheet, with dimensions of around 190 x 280 or 140 x 190 mm, and variously worked with pencil, watercolour and gouache; see the technical notes in the overall Introduction for others.3