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 ... > Prague, Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Rhine ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Prague: St Nicholas's Church, Little Quarter, from the South-West, with a Carriage in the Foreground 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Prague: St Nicholas's Church, Little Quarter, from the South-West, with a Carriage in the Foreground’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 68 Recto:
Prague: St Nicholas's Church, Little Quarter, from the South-West, with a Carriage in the Foreground 1835
D30759
Turner Bequest CCCIV 68
Pencil on cream laid paper, 118 x 190 mm
Watermark with the Lion of the Seven Provinces | ‘h’ | ‘jh[&z]’
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘68’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCIV–68’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner depicts a street in the centre of Prague’s Little Quarter, looking down toward the baroque Church of St Nicholas. Built on the site of a former gothic church, St Nicholas’ dates from the early years of the 1700s.1 From this vantage point St Nicholas’ dome and one of its towers can be seen. A horse-drawn carriage is in the foreground at right.
Turner produced several sketches of Prague on the 1835 tour; For other drawings in this sketchbook see 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. See also the Dresden, Tepliz and Prague sketchbook (Tate D30344–D30361, D30364–D30366; Turner Bequest CCCI 25–33a, 36–37).

Alice Rylance-Watson
December 2015

1
‘About the Church’, St Nicholas, accessed 17 December 2015, http://www.stnicholas.cz/en/about-the-church

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Prague: St Nicholas's Church, Little Quarter, from the South-West, with a Carriage in the Foreground 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 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-st-nicholass-church-little-quarter-from-the-south-r1187134, accessed 19 April 2024.