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

With the page turned horizontally, the main view is from the raised roadway on the north side of Wörtherstrasse, Donaustauf, where the heavy criss-crossed railings survive. On the hill to the east is the outline of the classical Walhalla memorial, now hidden by dense woodland. The Danube Valley is below to the right, and the prospect is continued above the main view, with a reprise of the outline of the Walhalla on the left. The subject was identified by Cecilia Powell.1 In the foreground of the subsidiary view is the Chinese-style tea pavilion which still stands in a small wooded park (noted by Turner as ‘Gardens’) on the south side of Wörtherstrasse.

An effect over the hills and river marked ‘Claude Dis[tance]’ evidently reminded Turner of the light-filled paintings of the Rome-based French painter Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682), whom he greatly admired and often emulated,2 occasionally recalling his name while sketching;3 see for example a note of ‘The first bit of Claude’ in the 1819 Ancona to Rome sketchbook as he travelled through Italy for the first time (Tate D14663; Turner Bequest CLXXVII 6). Elsewhere in the present book, Turner’s short-lived contemporary Thomas Girtin is specifically evoked; see folio 68 recto (D31410).

Powell has noted that the view west on folio 37 recto opposite (D31348) is ‘from the same spot’.4 For numerous contemporary views of Donaustauf, the adjacent St Salvator’s Church and the Walhalla in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 33 verso (D31341);5 for nearby Regensburg, see under folio 18 verso (D31311).6