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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Trieste, Graz and Danube Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Schloss Wallsee, Down the River Danube; the Top of St Stephen's Cathedral Spire, Vienna 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Schloss Wallsee, Down the River Danube; the Top of St Stephen's Cathedral Spire, Vienna’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 8 Verso:
Schloss Wallsee, Down the River Danube; the Top of St Stephen’s Cathedral Spire, Vienna 1840
D30017
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 8a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 198 x 127 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wha’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Wallsee | Wallshee’ towards top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Church and castle. – “Wallsee” and “Wallshee.” (? Waldsee or Wallsee.)’): ‘Nieder Wallsee’.1 The two related drawings towards the top show aspects of Schloss Wallsee, at Wallsee-Sindelburg on the south bank of the River Danube east of Linz, as Turner passed it on his westward voyage. Despite later renovations, the castle and its distinctive spire remain recognisable. See also folio 9 recto opposite (D30018), folio 14 recto (D30028) and the 1833 Salzburg and Danube sketchbook (Tate D30243–D30247; Turner Bequest CCC 57a–59a). Turner had fortuitously made a thumbnail copy from a lithograph of the castle while staying in Vienna shortly before passing it again in reality; see folio 12 verso (D30025).
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.
Running from left to right below the two main views is an incongruous, lightly drawn detail of the spire over the south transept of St Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, continued upwards from the full-page horizontal view on folio 9 verso (D30019); Turner would have temporarily slid the edge of that drawing half-way back to allow enough space on the present page to align and continue the full height of its upper stages here.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.967; see also his similar note in a standard copy in the same collection, p.967.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Schloss Wallsee, Down the River Danube; the Top of St Stephen’s Cathedral Spire, Vienna 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-schloss-wallsee-down-the-river-danube-the-top-of-st-stephens-r1196867, accessed 26 April 2024.