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Artist or Maker: Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A. (1775-1851)

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Provenance: painted for Walter Fawkes, 1817.
Frederick Hawksworth Fawkes, sold 1912 to Agnew's, London.
T.A. Tatton; Christie's, London, 14 December 1928, lot 35 (720 gns. to Agnew's).
Lord Horder, Sotheby's, London, 10 December 1958, lot 102, (£1,800 to Agnew's).
with Agnew's, London, sold 1959 to George Goyder.

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Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, Old Masters, winter 1889, no. 49. London, Lawrie and Co., Paintings and Drawings from Farnley Hall, 1902, no. 19. Manchester, Agnew's Exchange Street Galleries, Watercolours, 1912, no. 75.
London, Agnew's, 1913, no. 48.
London, Agnew's, Centenary Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings by J.M.W. Turner, R.A., 1951, no. 60.
London, Agnew's, Annual Water-Colour Exhibition, 1959, no. 47.
London, Agnew's, Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Watercolours by J.M.W. Turner, R.A., November-December 1967, no. 51.
London, Royal Academy, Turner 1775-1851, November 1974 - March 1975, no. 196.
Hamburg, Kunsthalle, William Turner and die Landschaft seiner Zeit, May-July 1976, no. 40, illustrated.
London, Tate Gallery, and Brussels, Musée d'Ixelles, Turner's Rivers of Europe: The Rhine, Meuse and Mosel, September 1991-April 1992, no. 7, illustrated.
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, May 1997-April 2004, on loan.

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Literature: J. Ruskin, Pre-Raphaelitism, 1851, Library Edition, vol. XII, London, 1904, pp. 376-8.
W. Thornbury, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., London, 1862, vol. II, pp. 86-7, 395; 2nd edition 1877, pp. 238, 591.
Athenaeum, 1879, vol. II, pp. 406, 637.
W. Armstrong, Turner, London, 1902, pp. 272.
A.J. Finberg, Turner's Water-Colours at Farnley Hall, London, Paris and New York, n.d. [1912], pp. 8-10, 24, no. 50, illustrated in colour pl. 29, illustrated
M. Butlin, Turner Watercolours, London, 1962, p. 30, no. 6, illustrated in colour.
A. Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg and London, 1979, p. 378, no. 677, illustrated.
C. Powell, Turner's Rivers of Europe: The Rhine, Meuse and Mosel, London, 1991, p. 101, no. 7, illustrated.

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Notes: This is one of the famous series of fifty watercolours of views on the Rhine, based on sketches done on the spot in 1817 in the Waterloo and Rhine and Rhine sketchbooks (Tate, Turner Bequest CLX and CLXI). Turner left London on 10 August, passed through Belgium and Holland, visiting the Field of Waterloo, and reached Cologne on 18 August. He went up the Rhine as far as Mainz, where he stayed on 25 and 26 August, and was back at Cologne on 29 August; he was at St. Goar on 23 and 24 August and again on 27 August. He returned to London and then set off for Farnley Hall, the home of his great patron Walter Fawkes, by way of Raby Castle, where he made sketches for the painting now in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. He reached Farnley Hall about two months later, by which time he had completed the fifty watercolours. (For the fullest and most recent account of the 1817 Rhine tour see C. Powell, Turner in Germany, London, 1995, pp. 20-29, 86-105; see also Powell, op. cit., 1991, pp. 20-36, 97-105, 189-202.).

St. Goar lies on the steeply banked, dramatic stretch of the Rhine between the rivers Nahe in the south and Mosel in the north. This view, looking south, shows St. Goar on the right and St. Goarhausen on the left, seen from the castle of Rheinfels. It is based on a sketch in the Rhine sketchbook, the larger of the two sketchbooks used by Turner on the Rhine in 1817 (TB CLXI f. 42 recto; illustrated Powell, op. cit., 1991, p. 101, see fig. 1), though the artist has made the contours of the river banks and hills bolder and has inserted into the foreground the ruined brickwork of Burg Rheinfels, devastated by the French in the wars of the 1790s. Turner included a particularly large number of views of Rheinhausen, St. Goar and Katz in his 1817 series (see also Wilton, op.cit., nos. 645, 649, 650, 676 and 684).

Ruskin writes of the 1817 Rhine watercolours, 'Every one of these sketches is the almost instantaneous record of an effect of colour or atmosphere, taken strictly from nature... And naturally, as the colour becomes the leading object, those times of day are chosen in which it is most lovely...' (loc.cit.). What Ruskin did not realise was that the watercolours were based on sketches rather than being done on the spot.

Turner's journey up the Rhine in 1817 was his first abroad since the end of the Napoleonic Wars opened Europe again after the years of strife. It resulted in an important picture about the Battle of Waterloo, and the famous series of fifty watercolours, derived from pencil sketches made on the way. They provide an unexpectedly intimate 'illustrated tour' of the great river between Cologne and Mainz, through its most celebrated and sublime scenery.

This is one of the most expansive views of the sequence, taken from high on the hillside among the ruins of Burg Rheinfels, looking upstream towards St Goarhausen, the town in the distance on the left of the composition. Turner has orchestrated the scene in exquisite gradations of subtle greys and blues, organising and harmonising the landscape he had carefully recorded on a page of his Rhine sketchbook. The sweeping hills open up for the broad waterway of the Rhine to reflect the diffused light of the sun as the morning mists clear from the surface of the water and the surrounding slopes. The ruins of the castle of Rheinfels provide both a 'platform' from which we admire the view, and a reminder that the geography of the river has been central to the political and military history of Europe as well as to its prosperity, from medieval times to the present.

We are grateful to Andrew Wilton for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.

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