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

With the page used vertically, as confirmed by Turner’s inscription and Cecilia Powell1 the three successive views here are around Sankt Nikola, on the north bank of the River Danube east of Grein; see also the 1833 Salzburg and Danube sketchbook (Tate D30253; Turner Bequest CCC 62a). In the top drawing the spire of the parish church is seen to the west; the central view was made shortly afterwards as Turner’s boat passed upriver, while the third shows the prospect past the village.

Discussing Turner’s Danube route between folios 31 verso–38 recto (D30059–D30072;2 like much of this sketchbook, apparently used in reverse of their present foliation), Cecilia Powell has observed that within a brief stretch of two or three miles his ‘most intensive sequence of sketches, occupying fourteen pages, was made during the steamer’s cautious passage upstream from St Nikola to Grein, past the Wirbel and the Strudel’;3 these hazardous rapids, shown on old maps respectively east and west of Struden and nearby Burg Werfenstein (less than a mile further on), no longer exist following the elimination of associated rocks to improve navigation later in the nineteenth century.

Although Turner’s route upriver was straightforward, his somewhat haphazard use of this book to record it was not. For the geographical sequence of identified views between Vienna and Passau (see under folios 40 recto and 31 recto; D30076, D30058), see this sketchbook’s Introduction.