Joseph Mallord William Turner

Views on the River Danube: The Leopoldsberg, near Vienna; Mauthausen, near Linz

1840

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Trieste, Graz and Danube Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 198 × 127 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D30049
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 25

Catalogue entry

There are four views arranged vertically down the page, showing scenes on the River Danube, as identified by Cecilia Powell,1 albeit the subjects of the first and the rest were far apart. At the top is the Leopoldsberg hill on the west bank of the river just north of Vienna; for other views on this occasion and in 1833, see under folio 7 recto (D30014).
Separated by a pencil line, at least two if not all three of the remaining sketches show Mauthausen, roughly a hundred miles to the west, on the north bank near Linz; see also folio 24 verso opposite (D30048), under which an earlier sketch is also noted.
Although Turner’s route upriver was straightforward, his somewhat haphazard use of this book to record it was not. For the geographical sequence of identified views between Vienna and Passau (see under folios 40 recto and 31 recto; D30076, D30058), see this sketchbook’s Introduction.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.241.

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