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 ... > Venice; Passau to Würzburg Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Distant Views of Donaustauf, St Salvator's Pilgrimage Church and the Walhalla, near Regensburg, from the River Danube 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant Views of Donaustauf, St Salvator's Pilgrimage Church and the Walhalla, near Regensburg, from the River Danube’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 42 Recto:
Distant Views of Donaustauf, St Salvator’s Pilgrimage Church and the Walhalla, near Regensburg, from the River Danube 1840
D31358
Turner Bequest CCCX 42
Pencil on cream wove paper, 126 x 198 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘42’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCX – 42’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page was used horizontally both ways up for two variant views, in each case looking north across the Danube Valley between Donaustauf, with its ruined castle overlooking St Michael’s Church on the left, with the smaller pilgrimage church of St Salvator dominated by the regular form of the classical Walhalla memorial on the crest to the right; the view nearest the gutter includes a continuation to the right above the main drawing. There is a similar view on folio 43 recto (D31360). The subject was identified by Cecilia Powell.1
Powell has compared the prospects of Donaustauf here and on folios 38 recto and 43 recto (D31350, D31360) with that in a lithograph by Jakob Alt (1789–1872), plate 39 of the extensive Donau-Ausichten series published between 1819 and the mid-1820s, several of which Turner had copied in thumbnail sketches in the Trieste, Graz and Danube book while staying in Vienna earlier in the tour; in this case, compare one of the four on Tate D30020 (Turner Bequest CCXCIX 10).2
For numerous contemporary views of Donaustauf, the pilgrimage church and the Walhalla in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 33 verso (D31341);3 for nearby Regensburg, see under folio 18 verso (D31311).4

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.243.
2
See ibid., pp.67–8, 81 note 29, 242.
3
See also ibid., pp.70, 82 note 53.
4
See ibid., pp.69, 81 note 45.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Distant Views of Donaustauf, St Salvator’s Pilgrimage Church and the Walhalla, near Regensburg, from the River Danube 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-distant-views-of-donaustauf-st-salvators-pilgrimage-church-r1196146, accessed 26 April 2024.