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 ... > Copenhagen to Dresden Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Berlin: The Münze on the Werderscher Markt 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Berlin: The Münze on the Werderscher Markt’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Recto
Berlin: The Münze on the Werderscher Markt 1835
D31050
Turner Bequest CCCVII 16
Pencil on cream laid paper, 89 x 162 mm
Watermark ‘cfw & s’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Fridericus Guilelmus III Rex | Monetariae Mineralogicae Architectonicae | MDCCC’ top right; ‘Lion’, ‘Lion H’ top centre towards right; ‘Doric’ bottom centre
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘16’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCVII–16’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This prospect shows the now demolished Royal Mint (Münze) in Berlin, taken from a vantage point on the Werderscher Markt. Turner has transcribed the inscription above the main portal: ‘Fridericus Guilelmus III Rex | Monetariae Mineralogicae Architectonicae | MDCCC’ (the full and correct rendering is: ‘Freidericus Guilelmus III rex rei monetariae mineralogiae architectonicae MDCCC’). In addition to the Mint (‘monetariae’), the building also housed Prussia’s Royal Mineral Cabinet and the kingdom’s administrative offices for mining (‘mineralogiae’, ‘architectonicae’).1 The remaining inscriptions ‘Doric’ and ‘Lion H[ead]’ presumably refer to the Doric columns at the entrance of the Mint and its lion head decorations.
For other sketches of Berlin see Tate D21045–D31082; Turner Bequest CCCVII 13a–32.

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2015

1
Jacob Vogel, ‘Stony Realms: Mineral Collections as Markers of Social, Cultural and Political Spaces in the 18th and Early 19th Century’, Academia, accessed 17 May 2015, http://www.academia.edu/10819269/Jakob_Vogel_Stony_Realms._Mineral_Collections_as_Markers_of_Social_Cultural_and_Political_Spaces_in_the_18th_and_Early_19th_Century_in_Historical_Social_Research_40_2015_pP._301–320

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Berlin: The Münze on the Werderscher Markt 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-berlin-the-munze-on-the-werderscher-markt-r1186923, accessed 26 April 2024.