'Zurich: the Grossmünster and Rathaus from across the River Limmat, Looking Towards the Lake', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Zurich: the Grossmünster and Rathaus from across the River Limmat, Looking Towards the Lake

From Lake Thun Sketchbook

Turner Bequest LXXVI

Date 1802

MediumGraphite on paper

Dimensionssupport: 156 x 201 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D04660

Turner Bequest LXXVI 11 a

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Turner's sketchbooks

View this artwork in the Lake Thun Sketchbook

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Folio 11 Verso:

Zurich: the Grossmünster and Rathaus from across the River Limmat, Looking Towards the Lake 1802

D04660
Turner Bequest LXXVI 11a

Pencil on white laid paper, 156 x 201 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXVI 11’ bottom right

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

References

After touring Lake Lucerne and the Reuss valley, Turner went north to Zurich, the starting point for his return along the Rhine. Expanding Finberg’s title, David Hill notes that this is the only view of the city Turner made on this tour, remarking both his ‘general indifference to urban subjects’ and also the expense and dirt of the city’s inns at this period.1 He assumes Turner was in a hurry to get to the resort of Baden, about twelve miles down the river, where he made a number of sketches; see folios 10 and 15 verso of this sketchbook (D04658, D04668) and also, with varying degrees of certainty, folios 57, 58, 59, 63 verso–64, 64 verso–65 (D04714, D04715, D04716, D04721–D04722, D04723–D04724).

David Blayney Brown
March 2004

Hill 1992, p.145.

Read this catalogue entry in full

This catalogue entry is part of: David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012.