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 Equestrian Statue of the Great Elector, by Schlüter, on the Langebrücke; Berlin: The Museum, Domkirche and Schlossbrücke from the South 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Berlin: The Equestrian Statue of the Great Elector, by Schlüter, on the Langebrücke; Berlin: The Museum, Domkirche and Schlossbrücke from the South’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Verso
Berlin: The Equestrian Statue of the Great Elector, by Schlüter, on the Langebrücke; Berlin: The Museum, Domkirche and Schlossbrücke from the South 1835
D31067
Turner Bequest CCCVII 24 a
Pencil on cream laid paper, 162 x 89 mm
Watermarked with a beehive surrounded by garlands and bees
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘H[...]’ bottom right (inverted)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner has depicted part of the equestrian statue of Frederick William (1620–1688), Elector of Brandenburg. The statue was designed by Andreas Schlüter (1664–1714) and cast in bronze by Johann Jacobi (1696–1709) for the Langebrücke.1 It is now situated in the cour d’honneur of the Charlottenburg Palace. Turner records the pedestal of Schlüter’s monument and the Four Captives which surround it.2 Below the sketch is a view of the Altes Museum in Berlin, with the Cathedral at right and the Schlossbrücke in the foreground.
For other sketches of Berlin see Tate D21045–D31082; Turner Bequest CCCVII 13a–32.

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2015

1
‘The Monument to the Great Elector on Horseback’, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, accessed 29 May 2015, http://ww2.smb.museum/schlueter/das-reiterstandbild
2
Schlüter clearly intended to emulate the equestrian monument to Henri IV designed for the Pont Neuf in Paris by Giambologna and Pietro Tacca. Largely destroyed in the French Revolution, Pietro Francavilla’s Four Captives which once surrounded the monument’s pedestal still remain (Musée du Louvre, Paris); see http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/four-captives-pedestal-equestrian-statue-henry-iv

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Berlin: The Equestrian Statue of the Great Elector, by Schlüter, on the Langebrücke; Berlin: The Museum, Domkirche and Schlossbrücke from the South 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-equestrian-statue-of-the-great-elector-by-r1186940, accessed 24 April 2024.