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The Covered Bridge or Turner and Ruskin at Rheinfelden

The so-called Rheinfelden Sketchbook by J.M.W. Turner (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks?gid=65969&ws=page&wv=list) shows obvious depictions of the (Swiss) city of Rheinfelden and its bridge, but also pages that seemingly show very little or hardly anything at all. Historians in search of accurate renderings of the 19th century cityscape seem to prefer the even more accurate renderings by John Ruskin (the newly published history of the city of Rheinfelden even says explicitly that a particular rendering by Ruskin, also reproduced in the book, is more realistic than the renderings by Turner, and in reproducing the Ruskin lithograph, kept by the Fricktaler Museum, located at the city of Rheinfelden, leaves the Rheinfelden Sketchbook by Turner aside completely).
A modern viewer, however, might say that the documentary value of the Ruskin renderings, including his photographs, is beyond question, especially as to the showing of the building on top of the old bridge, yet find the Turner renderings more interesting, and the pages of the Rheinfelden sketchbook that show little more than waves, or even a single wave, or hardly anything at all, most interesting. Because a trip to the city of Rheinfelden in search of Turner, his viewpoints and his pictorial strategies, might begin as a trip to evaluate visible things (and their possible fading away), but on the other hand end as a visual reflection about the invisible.

A stream of commodities that passes a sort of a tunnel on top of a bridge over a stream – this is what one might see in any old rendering of the bridge over the river Rhein at Rheinfelden. The river, passing here the so-called St.-Anna-Loch (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/St.-Anna-Loch), a most dangerous spot, while only in little distance, on the one side of the so-called »Inseli«, secure places are to find to dabble in shallow waters on a Sunday afternoon. And because of the stream of commodities and people, in 1844, when Turner passed through Rheinfelden, a building on top of the bridge did exist (the commodities were being brought to Swiss territory from the territories of the Deutscher Zollverein (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Zollverein), in existence since 1834, or vice versa). No traces of the custom building seem to be left, and only if one digs somewhat deeper into the history of the city of Rheinfelden, one does come across depictions of that fascinating building at all. But thanks to John Ruskin we may even show a photograph of it here, a view of that custom building that obviously did also fascinate Turner, and that can be seen in a frontal view in the particular sketch from the Rheinfelden Sketchbook that we have already shown above (the source of all Sketchbook pictures shown here is tate.org.uk; picture below: arhitectura-1906.ro ; immediately following is the Turner sketch from the very opposite direction and the more frontal Ruskin rendering (source is: www.victorianweb.org), in brutal confrontation with how the bridge did look today, i.e. on this very Sunday; picture: DS).

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If we look at the Rheinfelden Sketchbook as a whole, it is becoming obvious that 69-year old Turner was not mainly interested in accurate renderings of a cityscape. What, in doing his sketches, he seems to test – and testing might be the accurate word here – is the potential of the visual outlook of Rheinfelden and its bridge for poetic transfiguration. For turning, if one likes so, into a work of art, a picture, that in the end might still have to do on some levels with the actual city of Rheinfelden and its history, but, as the picture of a London bridge might turn into the picture of a fantasy Empire, does belong to a world of poetic imagination and inner mental images in the end.
And transfiguration means here the actual physical transfiguration on a level of building blocks as the psychological and poetic dimension on a level of associations, mental images and dreams (if not to speak of nightmares).
Actual physical transfiguration of course happens within history. The custom building on top of the bridge that is in our focus was built in 1758, replacing an earlier tower, but also built from the building blocks of a former fort.
And in 1897, on a hot summer day, the covered bridge did actually burn down, which is why there is no building anymore, and pieces of burning wood were swimming, as tradition has it, downstream and as far as Basel.
It is as Turner would have imagined such transfigurations by natural forces of fire or water in his sketches, and it also seems that he was seeking for (and in a way anticipating) them. And the more he turns away from naturalism, paradoxically, the more his interest seems to shift to the actual forces of physical transfiguration, the wave, the whirl, the heat, the pressure and so forth (picture below: DS).

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In search for Turner views on the borders of the river Rhein we might end up disappointed, if we would except that Turner views could still be found (they can be found, but only as far 19th century pictures also render the river banks).
The borders have changed, and maybe even more dramatically if compared to the rather stable building of a bridge. But on our excursions we might experience, how, by forces of accident, or instigated by our own imagination, objects and views relate to each other unexpectedly. One might focus on the works of art, placed for every visitor to see on the river walkway on the German side, or to other, unexpected works (picture below: DS), that might even impress more, if seen as works of art, than the works actually done by artists (and given, as a present, from one city of Rheinfelden – the Swiss side – to the other – the German side).

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And what, in the end, seems the most powerful mean of transfigurating a cityscape is virtually absent, and in being virtually absent, most powerfully present in Turner’s minimalistic sketches. It is, of course, the light, the changing of atmosphere, and light, if understood also metaphorically. Because this is what representing a cityscape including a bridge might actually mean: testing how it shows in various lights, in various atmospheres, and testing where this leads to, in its transfigurations of the visible on various levels, and where our poetic imagination, be it that of a beholder or that of an actual artist, is taken to. This is, what the Rheinfelden Sketchbook might show, and this is what it, as a beautiful example of poetic creativity, might even teach.

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