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 and Saxon Switzerland Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Rocks of the Bastei and its Bridge, Looking Southwards 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Rocks of the Bastei and its Bridge, Looking Southwards’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 49 Verso:
The Rocks of the Bastei and its Bridge, Looking Southwards 1835
D30981
Turner Bequest CCCVI 49 a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 104 x 170 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch was taken at the Bastei, a rock formation in Saxon Switzerland. Its jagged rocks and pinnacles became a tourist attraction at the end of the eighteenth century. A wooden bridge, pictured here, was constructed in 1824 to link several of the rocks for the enjoyment of tourists. Crossing it was a thrilling experience, which afforded the visitor breath-taking views of the surrounding mountains from a terrace six hundred feet over the Elbe.
The Bastei is shown again on Tate D30982–D31001; Turner Bequest CCCVI 50–59a.

Alice Rylance-Watson
August 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Rocks of the Bastei and its Bridge, Looking Southwards 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 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-the-rocks-of-the-bastei-and-its-bridge-looking-southwards-r1186853, accessed 26 April 2024.