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 ... > The Route to Venice: The Rivers Mosel ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Burg Rheineck on the River Rhine 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Burg Rheineck on the River Rhine’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Burg Rheineck on the River Rhine 1840
D33909
Turner Bequest CCCXLI 204
Pencil on grey wove paper, 146 x 190 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram below left of centre
Inscribed in pencil ‘204’ and in red ink ‘204’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLI – 204’ top left, upside down
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Burg Rheineck is shown on the right, above the west bank of the Rhine near Brohl-Lützing, looking downstream to the north-west. 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.
Turner had recorded the castle in the 1817 Itinerary Rhine Tour and Waterloo and Rhine sketchbooks (respectively Tate D12660; Turner Bequest CLIX 82; D12792–D12793, D12858–D12859, D12861; CLX 47a, 48, 80a, 81, 82), and there is a general view of the scene with a detail of the castle in the 1824 Rivers Meuse and Moselle book (D19839; CCXVI 144a). Although it had been rebuilt after 1832,1 the profiles in the latter drawings are comparable to the simplified outline in the present view; see also D12858 (CLX 80a) among the 1817 pages.
The other side of this sheet is D33905 (Turner Bequest CCCXLI 200), showing the Godesburg, roughly twenty miles downriver towards Bonn. For the likely sequence of the Rhine subjects in this grouping and the wider context of the tour, see the Introduction to this subsection. Rheineck is the only Rhine castle in this grouping not to feature again in the Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCCIII), used as Turner travelled homeward a few weeks later.
1
See ‘Rheineck’, EBIDAT, accessed 11 May 2018, http://www.ms-visucom.de/cgi-bin/ebidat.pl?id=206.
Technical notes:
There is some irregular pale brown staining.
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

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Powell 1995, pp.150–1; see also Karl Heinz Stader, William Turner und der Rhein, Bonn 1981, p.43.
2
Finberg 1909, II, p.1073.
3
See also Powell 1995, p.145.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Burg Rheineck on 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-burg-rheineck-on-the-river-rhine-r1196423, accessed 21 November 2024.