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

There are two sequences of drawings here, inverted relative to each other. In the top half as foliated are four views of what Cecilia Powell has identified with the help of Turner’s scrawled inscription as Schloss Ottensheim,1 on the north bank of the River Danube a few miles upstream to the west of Linz. There are two main views, approaching from the east and directly from the south, as well as two thumbnail studies framed by pencil lines; the orientation of these is unclear, but they were made to show the sun low over the horizon, either at dawn or sunset, seemingly with radiating sunbeams in the right-hand variant. There seems to be another distant view among other subjects on folio 25 verso (D30050).

The other way up are three looser sketches of valley scenery, with buildings including a church spire. They seem to be from another, likely earlier, phase of the journey; one may be inscribed ‘R d’, an abbreviation used occasionally on other pages here (such as folio 32 verso; D30046) for ‘River Danube’, or it may be a variation on the artist’s more customary and elementary ‘Road’. Two of the three also seem to show a crescent moon; as noted under the verso (D30057), the moon was full at around the time Turner was travelling up the Danube, suggesting that they were made on another occasion.

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.

Verso:

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