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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Carriage Sketches of Hills and Distant Towns, Including Regensburg and the Route between Bamberg and Coburg 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 32 Verso:
Carriage Sketches of Hills and Distant Towns, Including Regensburg and the Route between Bamberg and Coburg 1840
D31339
Turner Bequest CCCX 32a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 126 x 198 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wha
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Road R[?egensburg]’ towards top left, ‘[...] | Regbg’ towards top right, and ‘Road from [...Bam] to Coburg’ centre left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There seem to be four rapidly drawn views here, made both ways up with the page turned horizontally. From Turner’s scattered and scrawled annotations, Finberg suggested ‘Ratisbon’ (the customary older English form for Regensburg), and Cecilia Powell has concurred. The view of distant towers and spires at the top left appears to be labelled to that effect, and the wider view along the gutter seems to show a similar array. The looser ‘carriage sketch’ separated by pencil lines at the top right seems to show hills, possibly again with distant buildings, but Turner’s notes around it are fragmentary. For numerous contemporary views of Regensburg in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 18 verso (D31311);1 there is a clearer view from a distance on folio 33 recto opposite (D31340).
The rough profile of hills across the centre is the other way up, and drawn somewhat later on Turner’s route if the reading of his note ‘Road from [...Bam] to Coburg’ offered here is correct; for Bamberg and Coburg, see respectively under folios 19 recto and 1 verso (D31312, D31278); compare the thumbnail sketch accompanied by a similar phrase on the recto (D31338).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See also Powell 1995, pp.69, 81 note 45.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Carriage Sketches of Hills and Distant Towns, Including Regensburg and the Route between Bamberg and Coburg 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-carriage-sketches-of-hills-and-distant-towns-including-r1196127, accessed 09 July 2025.