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 ... > Prague, Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Rhine ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Prague: View across the Vltava to the Old Town with the Nostitz Palace in the Foreground 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Prague: View across the Vltava to the Old Town with the Nostitz Palace in the Foreground’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Recto:
Prague: View across the Vltava to the Old Town with the Nostitz Palace in the Foreground 1835
D30777
Turner Bequest CCCIV 77
Pencil on cream laid paper, 118 x 190 mm
Watermark with the Lion of the Seven Provinces
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘77’ bottom right, reinscribed ‘77’ in black ink at a later date and probably by another hand
Stamped in black ‘CCCIV–77’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch was taken in Prague’s Lesser Quarter just below Petrín Hill. The foreground of the view is rendered on the folio opposite (Tate D30776; Turner Bequest CCCIV 76a) and shows that Turner was drawing from a point close to Nostitz Palace. Beyond Nostitz is the Vltava River and a little of Charles Bridge, which can be seen at far left. The tallest building visible in the distance at left is the Church of Our Lady before Týn, but the churches of St Salvator, St Nicholas, Saints Simon and Jude and St Gall also appear, as well as many other baroque and medieval churches which lend Prague the nickname of ‘the city of a thousand spires’.
Turner produced several views of Prague on the 1835 tour. For other drawings in this sketchbook 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. See also the Dresden, Tepliz and Prague sketchbook (Tate D30344–D30361, D30364–D30366; Turner Bequest CCCI 25–33a, 36–37).

Alice Rylance-Watson
December 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Prague: View across the Vltava to the Old Town with the Nostitz Palace in the Foreground 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 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-view-across-the-vltava-to-the-old-town-with-the-r1187152, accessed 06 May 2026.