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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern Germany, the Elbe and Prague ... > Dresden, Teplitz and Prague Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Prague: View across the Vltava from the Belvedere to the Old Town, with the Týn Church 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Prague: View across the Vltava from the Belvedere to the Old Town, with the Týn Church’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Recto:
Prague: View across the Vltava from the Belvedere to the Old Town, with the Týn Church 1835
D30344
Turner Bequest CCCI 25
Pencil on cream wove paper, 100 x 159 mm
Partial Watermark ‘cf’
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘25’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCI – 25’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a sketch of Prague taken from the Belvedere, a renaissance summer palace located within the gardens of Prague Castle. The Belvedere’s elevated viewpoint afforded Turner excellent prospects of the city and its multitude of church spires and towers. Dominating the Old Town at right is Týn Church, a gothic construction with eighty-metre high towers topped with narrowly tapering spires and turrets. Also visible is the Town Hall and the baroque Church of St Nicholas’, situated close to Týn on the Old Town Square.
Turner produced several sketches of Prague on the 1835 tour; other drawings in this sketchbook can be found at Tate D30345–D30361, D30364–D30366; Turner Bequest CCCI 25a–33a, 36–37. The Prague, Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Rhine sketchbook of the same tour holds drawings of the city at Tate D30759–30761, D30764–D30765, D30767, D30771–D30773, D30775–D30777, D30779–D30783, D30788–D30790, D30792–D30803, D30805, D30807–D30811, D30813–D30820; Turner Bequest CCCIV 68–69, 70a–71, 72, 74–75, 76–77, 78–80, 82a–84, 85–91, 92, 93–96, 97–102.

Alice Rylance-Watson
September 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Prague: View across the Vltava from the Belvedere to the Old Town, with the Týn Church 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-prague-view-across-the-vltava-from-the-belvedere-to-the-old-r1186728, accessed 23 April 2024.