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 ... > Hamburg and Copenhagen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Copenhagen: St Nicholas' Tower from the Corner of Nikolaj Plads and Store Kirkestraede; Distant Views of Copenhagen from the Sound 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Copenhagen: St Nicholas' Tower from the Corner of Nikolaj Plads and Store Kirkestraede; Distant Views of Copenhagen from the Sound’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Recto:
Copenhagen: St Nicholas' Tower from the Corner of Nikolaj Plads and Store Kirkestraede; Distant Views of Copenhagen from the Sound 1835
D30829
Turner Bequest CCCV 5
Pencil on white laid writing paper, 155 x 92 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘1591’ top centre, ‘B[...]’ centre left, ‘S[...]’ centre left towards middle
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘5’ bottom right (very faded)
Stamped in black ‘CCCV–5’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The principal sketch depicts St Nicholas’ Tower, taken from a corner of Nikolaj Plads, Copenhagen. The tower was once part of a church destroyed in a devastating fire in 1795.1 Above the tower Turner has inscribed ‘1591’, the date of the tower’s completion.2
The two other sketches on this page are distant views of Copenhagen Øresund or Sound. They are rendered below the study of St Nicholas’ Tower, orientated with the sketchbook turned upside down, and across the left length of the page parallel to the gutter of the sketchbook.
There are two illegible inscriptions at bottom left of St Nicolas’ Tower.
For other drawings of Copenhagen see Tate D30824–D30829, D30832–D30833, D30859, D30861, D30873, D30881, D30883, D30887; Turner Bequest CCCV 2–5, 6a–7, 20, 21, 27, 31, 32, 34.

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2015

1
‘The History of Copenhagen Contemporary Arts Centre’, Nikolaj Kunsthal, accessed 28 April 2015, http://www.nikolajkunsthal.dk/en/info/history-copenhagen-contemporary-art-center
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Copenhagen: St Nicholas' Tower from the Corner of Nikolaj Plads and Store Kirkestraede; Distant Views of Copenhagen from the Sound 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-copenhagen-st-nicholas-tower-from-the-corner-of-nikolaj-r1187207, accessed 21 May 2024.