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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern Germany, the Elbe and Prague ... > Hamburg and Copenhagen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Hamburg: View across the Binnenalster with the Gertrudkirche and Jacobikirche 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Hamburg: View across the Binnenalster with the Gertrudkirche and Jacobikirche’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Verso:
Hamburg: View across the Binnenalster with the Gertrudkirche and Jacobikirche 1835
D30854
Turner Bequest CCCV 17 a
Pencil on white laid writing paper, 92 x 155 mm
Partial Watermark: orb ornamented with laurel leaves
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘1’ top left, ‘2 [...]’ top centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch comprises instalment ‘1’ of one panoramic view of Hamburg, Germany. The other two instalments are continued on the folio opposite (Tate D30855; Turner Bequest CCCV 18). Turner produced this view from a vantage point looking across the Binnenalster Lake towards the Old Town. The dome of St Gertrude’s Chapel is to the left of St James’ Church (the Jacobikirche); details of the dome and spire are repeated in the sky by each respective building.
St Gertrude’s Chapel was built in 1391 by a charitable fraternity associated with the Jacobikirche and were chiefly devoted to caring for the poor and the sick.1 In 1842 the building burnt down in the great fire and was never reconstructed.
For more sketches of Hamburg see Tate D30842–D30860, D30862–D30870, D30872, D30874–D30880, D30882–D30886; Turner Bequest CCCV 11a–20a, 21a–25a, 26a, 27a–30a, 31a–33a.

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2015

1
‘Hamburg Gertrudenmusik’, Magnificat Baroque, accessed 7 May 2015, http://blog.magnificatbaroque.com/2007/09/13/hamburg-gertrudenmusik

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Hamburg: View across the Binnenalster with the Gertrudkirche and Jacobikirche 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-hamburg-view-across-the-binnenalster-with-the-gertrudkirche-r1187232, accessed 19 April 2024.