..in 1817

William Turner 1775-1851

English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist, known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings.

There’s a William Turner Route, a total of 26 sites between Koblenz and Bingen marking important waypoints on Turner’s journey through the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. The momentary impressions he captured at these locations were subsequently turned into watercolour masterpieces that communicate his passion for the special atmosphere and primordial quality of the landscape along this poetically idealised river. Walk-on info panels and interactive storytelling invite the viewer to enter the artist’s world.

Hi-tech stuff with QR codes and what have you.

(True story: When I helped run a ceramics market, I tried the drag the stick-in-the-mud(ish) potters into the 21st C and drop the average visitor age from pensioner to 20-ish to ensure an ongoing stream of buyers
QR codes, linking to the website that I set up featuring potters and not just pots.

“QR codes?” sniffed a 50-ish potter “**I* certainly don’t use them”

“”Exactly! You’re not the target audience…!”)

This is what he came up with in Bingen – the Ehrenfels castle on the north bank of the Rhine and the Mäuseturm (Mouse Tower) on a sandbank in the river itself.

(I think that mine’s a bit clearer, but – then again – what do I know…?)

07 May This entry was published on 7 May, 2025 at 09:00 and is filed under Art, History, Nature, NQM (Not quite Mainz), Out and about, Views. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.