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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Rotterdam to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bregenz and Lake Constance (the Bodensee) from the Gebhardsberg 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bregenz and Lake Constance (the Bodensee) from the Gebhardsberg’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Verso:
Bregenz and Lake Constance (the Bodensee) from the Gebhardsberg 1840
D32270
Turner Bequest CCCXX 4a
Pencil on white wove paper, 89 x 149 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Brgtz’ centre right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the view is to the north-west over Bregenz, with Lake Constance1 stretching away towards Konstanz, and the disk of what is presumably the setting sun low over the horizon. The viewpoint is near Burg Hohenbregenz castle on its crag on the Gebhardsberg. At the bottom left is the spire of the church adjacent to the castle, continued from folio 5 recto opposite (D32271). Finberg’s 1909 Inventory bracketed the two pages as a single subject,2 but they are independent. See under folio 2 verso (D32266) for Bregenz views on adjacent pages and four related watercolours on blue paper.3 The drawings on folios 4 recto–6 verso (D32269–D32274) are all from Gebhardsberg viewpoints.
Barbara Dawson has related this page and folio 3 verso (D32268) to one of the contemporary watercolours, with the sun setting beyond the lake (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin),4 although the topographical correspondence is not especially close.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Yardley 1983, p.55.
2
See Finberg 1909, II, p.1030.
3
See also Yardley 1983, pp.54–5, Powell 1995, pp.65, 81 note 8, 155, and Selborne 2008, pp.96, 98 note 2.
4
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.462 no.1351, as ‘Rapperswil’, reproduced; see Dawson 1988, p.114.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Bregenz and Lake Constance (the Bodensee) from the Gebhardsberg 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-bregenz-and-lake-constance-the-bodensee-from-the-r1196505, accessed 25 April 2024.