Beyond Turner

Too beautiful! The English Gaze on the Rhine
, Mittelrhein-Museum Koblenz, 10 May – 7 September 2025

After the end of the Continental Blockade, the Middle Rhine Valley became a major attraction for English travellers. The exhibition presents paintings, watercolours, prints, photographs, caricatures, and travel objects of this early form of tourism. Central to the popularisation of the Rhine was Lord Byron, who in his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage poetically transfigured the Drachenfels and other sites, thereby establishing a visual tradition that remains influential to this day.

That William Turner – the entrepreneurial painter of speed and light effects, who in the 20th century came to epitomise Rhine Romanticism – is represented here only by a minor work proves to be a gain. It allows attention to shift to a more nuanced and documentary-rich artistic milieu, with works by Clarkson Stanfield, Samuel Prout, James Webb, David Roberts, and Thomas Miles Richardson.

Travel diaries, souvenirs, and John Murray’s Handbooks document the practice of English travel along the Rhine. Caricatures by Eyre Crowe, Thackeray’s assistant, by Richard Doyle, or by Henry Ritter reflect the paradox of the search for seclusion and the simultaneous overcrowding of the valley by English visitors. British communities in Koblenz and Bonn, boarding schools, and Anglican churches illustrate the lasting presence of English residents. The picture is further expanded by early photography – by Cundall, Fleming, and Frith, among others – which revealed the processes of modernisation in the landscape where painting continued to suppress them.

The information-rich catalogue accompanying the exhibition: Too beautiful! Der englische Blick auf den Rhein, ed. by Matthias von der Bank and Silke Bettermann, with contributions by Piet Bovy, Christa Dohmann, Monika Effelsberg, among others, Paderborn: Fink Verlag, 2024, 248 pp., numerous illustrations.