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 ... > Dresden, Teplitz and Prague Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Prague: The Castle and Cathedral with an Extensive View up the Vltava; Prague: The Castle and Cathedral from the North-East with the Belvedere in the Castle Garden on the Right 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Prague: The Castle and Cathedral with an Extensive View up the Vltava; Prague: The Castle and Cathedral from the North-East with the Belvedere in the Castle Garden on the Right’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Recto:
Prague: The Castle and Cathedral with an Extensive View up the Vltava; Prague: The Castle and Cathedral from the North-East with the Belvedere in the Castle Garden on the Right 1835
D30350
Turner Bequest CCCI 28
Pencil on cream wove paper, 100 x 159 mm
Partial Watermark ‘af’
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘28’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCI – 28’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
At rear Turner has rendered a view of Prague, with the Castle and St Vitus Cathedral at right and Vltava River with Charles Bridge at centre. This sketch extends onto the folio opposite (Tate D30349; Turner Bequest CCCI 27a).
Prague Castle and Cathedral are recorded again in the sketch above. The Castle was for centuries the seat of the Kings of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperors and St Vitus the imperial place of worship. At right is the renaissance-styed Belvedere or Summer Palace, constructed in the mid sixteenth century for courtly entertainments and parties. Its elegant arcade, which is suggested in Turner’s sketch, was designed and lavishly decorated in relief by Italian stonemasons.1
Other drawings of Prague can be found at Tate D30344–D30361, D30364–D30366; Turner Bequest CCCI 25–33a, 36–37. The Prague, Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Rhine sketchbook of the same tour holds drawings of the city at Tate D30759–30761, D30764–D30765, D30767, D30771–D30773, D30775–D30777, D30779–D30783, D30788–D30790, D30792–D30803, D30805, D30807–D30811, D30813–D30820; Turner Bequest CCCIV 68–69, 70a–71, 72, 74–75, 76–77, 78–80, 82a–84, 85–91, 92, 93–96, 97–102.

Alice Rylance-Watson
September 2015

1
‘Royal Summer Palace’, Prague Castle, accessed 21 September 2015, https://www.hrad.cz/en/prague-castle/guidepost-for-visitors/royal-summer-palace.shtml

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Prague: The Castle and Cathedral with an Extensive View up the Vltava; Prague: The Castle and Cathedral from the North-East with the Belvedere in the Castle Garden on the Right 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 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-prague-the-castle-and-cathedral-with-an-extensive-view-up-r1186734, accessed 24 April 2024.