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 Martinsbühel below the Martinswand near Zirl, with the Inn Valley towards Innsbruck Beyond 1833

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Martinsbühel below the Martinswand near Zirl, with the Inn Valley towards Innsbruck Beyond’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Martinsbühel below the Martinswand near Zirl, with the Inn Valley towards Innsbruck Beyond 1833
D33850
Turner Bequest CCCXLI 160v
Chalk and pencil on grey wove paper, 136 x 190 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?River]’ bottom centre and [?Martin...]’ bottom right
Inscribed in pencil ‘233 | O’ top left, upside down
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 likely all 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.1
Turner’s scrawled inscription appears to begin ‘Martin’, presumably referring either to the to the steep Martinswand precipice on the fringes of the Karwendel Alps to the left, or the elevated hamlet of Martinsbühel below it, above the River Inn. There are white chalk highlights on and around the distant peaks downstream towards Innsbruck, on the river and on the rugged slopes to the left, where there is also some loose pencil hatching to suggest shadow at their foot.
The recto is D33849 (CCCXLI 160), which includes the same features in the background of a wider view from near the Kalvarienberg church north-east of Zirl, about seven miles west of Innsbruck; see its entry for numerous nearby subjects, and a note on two of Turner’s watercolours formerly thought to show the Martinswand. D33856 (CCCXLI 165) is a slighter reprise of the present view, and is inscribed in a similar way.
1
See also Powell 1995, pp.44, 79 note 84.
Technical notes:
There is scattered brown staining, which is particularly prominent in the upper half.

Matthew Imms
May 2019

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Martinsbühel below the Martinswand near Zirl, with the 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-martinsbuhel-below-the-martinswand-near-zirl-with-the-inn-r1204280, accessed 20 May 2024.