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

There are two nearby subject on the River Danube here, as identified by Cecilia Powell.1
Drawn first, with the page turned vertically, the view on the right shows a steamer off Jochenstein, on the north bank. Turner apparently shows the small shrine on a rock near where a hydroelectric power plant now spans the river. This stretch marks the border between Austria and Germany, and Jochenstein is the first German settlement passed on Turner’s route upstream to nearby Passau.

The two horizontal sketches show Obernzell, tentatively labelled by the artist, about four miles to the north-west on the German side. By the river in the foreground of the lower view is the steep pitched roof of the former episcopal palace of Schloss Obernzell, which now houses a ceramics museum. The twin spires of the Maria Himmelfahrt church are loosely outlined beyond. 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.

The page number ‘19a’ is inscribed at the corner appears to be in the neat, rounded hand of the Turner scholar C.F. Bell (1871–1966), who contributed to research on the Bequest.