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 ... > Venice up to Trento Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner An Alpine Mountain Scene; the Hauptplatz, Landsberg am Lech, with the Marienbrunnen Fountain and Schmalzturm, and the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche Beyond 1833

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘An Alpine Mountain Scene; the Hauptplatz, Landsberg am Lech, with the Marienbrunnen Fountain and Schmalzturm, and the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche Beyond’ 1833
Folio 73 Verso:
An Alpine Mountain Scene; the Hauptplatz, Landsberg am Lech, with the Marienbrunnen Fountain and Schmalzturm, and the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche Beyond 1833
D31739
Turner Bequest CCCXII 73a
Pencil on white laid paper, 109 x 203 mm
Partial watermark: crescent moon with face in profile
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page was used both horizontally and vertically. The right-hand half is taken up with a swiftly rendered mountain view, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. Probably drawn first, it is continued across folio 74 recto opposite (D31740), where there are buildings and a bridge in the foreground. Over half of the pages in this book comprise relatively slight sketches from Turner’s homeward route north through the valleys of the Alps via Trento, Bolzano (Bozen) and Innsbruck. As set out in the Introduction, although his overall itinerary is clear from many identified subjects, they were are not drawn in a single sequence, making the rugged scenes between them difficult to place.
In terms of the more carefully rendered urban scene, Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Market place’): ‘? Trent’.1 Although there are numerous views of Trento in this sketchbook (see under folio 37 recto; D31669), the present subject is from much further north, namely the picturesque southern Bavarian town of Landsberg am Lech, on Turner’s homeward route between Innsbruck and Augsburg (see under folios 17 recto and 30 recto respectively; D31629, D31655).
The view is east up the sloping triangular Hauptplatz market place, with the medieval Schmalzturm in the far corner. The artist did not pause to show the elaborate, multicoloured tile patterns which characterise its roof and spire; the latter is carried upwards over the gutter a little onto folio 74 recto opposite (D31740). He did however indicate the prominent halo around the head of the figure of Mary on the Marienbrunnen fountain towards the right. The gables shown beyond it have been replaced by a plain pitched roof like those to the left and right. Aligned slightly incongruously immediately to the left of the tower’s clock, the Baroque west front and one of the flanking spires of the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche is seen, higher up and about twice as far further on.
There are views of the Maria Himmelfahrt Church, up Ludwigstrasse off the north-west corner of the market place (out of sight beyond the left foreground here), on the recto (D31738), and a slighter view of the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche near another of Lansberg’s towers on D31740 opposite.2

Matthew Imms
May 2019

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1007.
2
The town’s castle-like prison, where Hitler was detained in 1924, had yet to be built.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘An Alpine Mountain Scene; the Hauptplatz, Landsberg am Lech, with the Marienbrunnen Fountain and Schmalzturm, and the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche Beyond 1833’, catalogue entry, May 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/an-alpine-mountain-scene-the-hauptplatz-landsberg-am-lech-with-the-marienbrunnen-fountain-r1203933, accessed 16 July 2025.