J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern Germany, the Elbe and Prague ... > Prague, Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Rhine ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Prague: The Town Hall of the Old Town with its Astronomical Clock, with the Tyn Church beyond 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Prague: The Town Hall of the Old Town with its Astronomical Clock, with the Tyn Church beyond’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 85 Verso:
Prague: The Town Hall of the Old Town with its Astronomical Clock, with the Tyn Church beyond 1835
D30793
Turner Bequest CCCIV 85 a
Pencil on cream laid paper, 190 x 118 mm
Watermark ‘jh[&z]’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a study of Prague’s celebrated astronomical clock or ‘Orloj’, mounted on the wall of the Old Town Hall. The clock was first installed in 1410, making it one of the oldest of its kind in the world and the oldest still operating.1 A highly intricate construction, it is shows the relative positions of the Sun and Moon, the signs of the zodiac and a calendar and also includes animated figurines of the Apostles, Death, and the personified Seven Sins. The Church of Our Lady Before Týn can be seen in the background.
The sketch continues onto the folio opposite (Tate D30794; Turner Bequest CCCIV 86).
Turner produced several views of Prague on the 1835 tour. For other drawings in this sketchbook Tate D30759–30761, D30764–D30765, D30767, D30771–D30773, D30775–D30777, D30779–D30783, D30788–D30790, D30792–D30803, D30805, D30807–D30811, D30813–D30820; Turner Bequest CCCIV 68–69, 70a–71, 72, 74–75, 76–77, 78–80, 82a–84, 85–91, 92, 93–96, 97–102. See also the Dresden, Tepliz and Prague sketchbook (Tate D30344–D30361, D30364–D30366; Turner Bequest CCCI 25–33a, 36–37).

Alice Rylance-Watson
December 2015

1
‘Astronomical Clock on the Old Town Square’, Czech Tourism, accessed 10 December 2016, http://www.czechtourism.com/c/prague-astronomical-clock/

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Prague: The Town Hall of the Old Town with its Astronomical Clock, with the Tyn Church beyond 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-prague-the-town-hall-of-the-old-town-with-its-astronomical-r1187168, accessed 19 April 2024.