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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Zirl and the Alps near Innsbruck; ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Kalvarienberg Church above Zirl, with the Martinswand and Inn Valley towards Innsbruck Beyond 1833

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Kalvarienberg Church above Zirl, with the Martinswand and Inn Valley towards Innsbruck Beyond’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Kalvarienberg Church above Zirl, with the Martinswand and Inn Valley towards Innsbruck Beyond 1833
D33849
Turner Bequest CCCXLI 160
Chalk and pencil on grey wove paper, 136 x 190 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom centre
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Bourke Vann]’ bottom left, upside down
Inscribed in red ink ‘160’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLI – 160’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of twenty-eight sketches of mountain scenes (some including castles and other buildings) on the rectos and versos of sixteen pieces of grey paper torn carefully from a single sheet; they were all likely made in the vicinity of Innsbruck within a short period around 23 September 1833, when Turner was travelling back from Venice towards the end of his tour, as discussed in the Introduction to the present subsection.
Towards the top is the late-Baroque Kalvarienberg Church (1803–5),1 seen to the west on its steep crag north-east of Zirl, about seven miles west of Innsbruck; there are dramatic vertical views of it from the valley on D33841, D33846 and D33852 (CCCXLI 155v, 158v and 161v); for other views around Zirl, see the Introduction to this grouping.
D33846 shows the same small arched feature immediately to the left of the church, which is a proscenium-like shrine containing a sculpture group of the Crucifixion. What seem to be some of the similar Stations of the Cross on the hillside below, restored and redecorated in the 1970s,2 are picked out in white chalk here, as are the River Inn and two of the distant peaks towards Innsbruck. Turner’s inverted inscription, which Finberg plausibly rendered as ‘Bourke Vann’3 is probably unrelated to the subject, and has yet to be convincingly interpreted.
The verso is D33850; this seems to be an enlarged view of the features in the right-hand half of the present sketch. It and D33856 (CCCXLI 165) are inscribed, apparently with variations of ‘Martin’, referring to the Martinswand, towering beyond the church in the present view on the fringes of the Karwendel Alps, or the hamlet of Martinsbühel below it.
Two watercolours on similarly sized sheets of coloured papers have been associated with the Martinswand. Manchester Art Gallery holds one on buff paper, long known as ‘St Martin’s Precipice, Innsbruck’.4 It has since been associated with views of Sisteron in southern France from later in the 1830s.5 The other, on grey paper like the pieces in the present grouping, is at Indianapolis Museum of Art, and remains known as ‘Martinswand, near Innsbruck’,6 although Melva Croal has noted that both the traditional identifications were ‘refuted by the director of archives in Innsbruck in a letter to Cecilia Powell while she was researching her exhibition Turner in Germany.’7
1
See ‘Kalvarienberg Chapel Zirl’, TouristLink, accessed 10 May 2019, https://www.touristlink.com/austria/kalvarienberg-chapel-zirl/overview.html.
2
Ibid.
3
Finberg 1909, II, p.1071.
4
As given in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.422 no.1035, as ‘?c.1833’ reproduced.
5
See Melva Croal in Charles Nugent and Croal, Turner Watercolors from Manchester, exhibition catalogue, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis 1997, p.100 no.64, reproduced in colour p.101.
6
As given in Wilton 1979, pp.422–3 no.1036, as c.1833, reproduced; see on-line entry at Indianapols Museum of Art, accessed 10 May 2019, http://collection.imamuseum.org/artwork/76711/, as catalogued and related to the 1833 tour in Martin F. Krause, Turner in Indianapolis: The Pantzer Collection of Drawings and Watercolors by J.M.W. Turner and his Contemporaries at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis 1997, reproduced in colour p.205, pp.206–7.
7
Croal in Croal and Nugent 1997, p.64; neither watercolour is mentioned in Cecilia Powell, Turner in Germany, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1995.
Technical notes:
There is some brown staining.

Matthew Imms
May 2019

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Kalvarienberg Church above Zirl, with the Martinswand and Inn Valley towards Innsbruck Beyond 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-kalvarienberg-church-above-zirl-with-the-martinswand-and-r1204279, accessed 20 May 2024.