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

This sheet and three others (D33881, D33832, D33854; Turner Bequest CCCXLI 129, 147, 163) show the outskirts of Augsburg in Bavaria, where Turner also used the contemporary Venice up to Trento and Rotterdam and Rhine sketchbooks (see respectively under Tate D31655 and D32543; Turner Bequest CCCXII 30, CCCXXII 2a). Although he had also passed through on the outward leg, it is perhaps most likely that the four separate views followed on from the mountain subjects near Innsbruck on similar grey paper included in the present grouping, as discussed in its Introduction. As set out there, the neatly torn edges of the Augsburg sketches match up to form a grid.

Although most of the scene does not survive, the present view appears to show the Göggingertor gateway along the west side of Augsburg’s old city walls, above its bridge over the moat, with the tower of the Moritzkirche to the left (see the 1833 Venice up to Trento sketchbook; Tate D31696, D31722; Turner Bequest CCCXII 50a, 64), and the Baroque onion-domed tower of SS. Ulrich and Afra in the distance between them to the south-east. The Göggingertor tower was demolished in 1862, as commemorated by a stone relief on nearby Bürgermeister-Fischer-Strasse, and the levelled site is now Königsplatz. The round features at its base, seen in old photographs, distinguish the tower from the similar Rotes Tor, which survives at the south-eastern corner of the old defences. The Göggingertor is seen clearly in D33811, and the other two sketches here also appear to show it.

Verso:

Blank, save for inscriptions; inscribed in pencil ‘233 | O’ top left, upside down.