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 ... > Heidelberg up to Salzburg Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Munich: The Marienplatz, Looking towards the Town Hall, Mariensäule and Peterskirche; Munich: The Peterskirche and Adjacent House 1833

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Munich: The Marienplatz, Looking towards the Town Hall, Mariensäule and Peterskirche; Munich: The Peterskirche and Adjacent House’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 57 Verso:
Munich: The Marienplatz, Looking towards the Town Hall, Mariensäule and Peterskirche; Munich: The Peterskirche and Adjacent House 1833
D29927
Turner Bequest CCXCVIII 57 a
Pencil on off-white lined paper, 110 x 165 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Marienplatz, the main square in Munich, is depicted in the principal sketch. The Rathaus (Town Hall) is at left, with Peterskirche at centre and the Mariensäule at centre right. The Mariensäule is a Marian column erected in 1638 to mark the Bavarian victory over Sweden during the Thirty Years’ War. A golden statue of the Virgin Mary, revered as the patron saint of Bavaria, tops the column.
With the sketchbook turned upright, in accordance with the foliation, Turner has rendered a more detailed drawing of the steeple of the Peterskirche with an adjacent house continued onto the folio opposite (Tate D29928; Turner Bequest CCXCVIII 58).
For more views of Munich see Tate D29920–D29929, D29931, D29939, D29947, D29955–D29963, D29971, D29974, D29976; Turner Bequest CCXCVIII 54–58a, 59a, 63a, 67a, 71a–75a, 79a, 81, 82.

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2017

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Munich: The Marienplatz, Looking towards the Town Hall, Mariensäule and Peterskirche; Munich: The Peterskirche and Adjacent House 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2017, 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/joseph-mallord-william-turner-munich-the-marienplatz-looking-towards-the-town-hall-r1203187, accessed 08 October 2025.