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 The Nikolaikirche and Michaeliskirche, Hamburg 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Nikolaikirche and Michaeliskirche, Hamburg’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Recto:
The Nikolaikirche and Michaeliskirche, Hamburg 1835
D30843
Turner Bequest CCCV 12
Pencil on white laid writing paper, 155 x 92 mm
Partial Watermark: orb ornamented with laurel leaves
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘12’ bottom right (very faded)
Stamped in black ‘CCCV–12’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner depicts the towers of two churches in Hamburg, Germany. Both drawings are rendered with the sketchbook turned upside down. At left is the tower of St Nicholas’ (Nikolaikirche), constructed in the seventeenth century.1 The church was incinerated in a fire of 1842, and rebuilt the following year. The other tower belongs to St Michael’s Church (Michaeliskirche).
For more sketches of Hamburg see Tate D30842–D30860, D30862–D30870, D30872, D30874–D30880, D30882–D30886; Turner Bequest CCCV 11a–20a, 21a–25a, 26a, 27a–30a, 31a–33a.

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2015

1
‘Geschichte’, Mahnmal St. Nikolai, accessed 27 April 2015, http://www.mahnmal-st-nikolai.de/?page_id=268

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Nikolaikirche and Michaeliskirche, Hamburg 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-the-nikolaikirche-and-michaeliskirche-hamburg-r1187221, accessed 22 May 2024.