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; Prague: View across the Vltava to the Old Town with the Nostiz Palace in the Foreground 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Prague; Prague: View across the Vltava to the Old Town with the Nostiz Palace in the Foreground’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 76 Verso:
?Prague; Prague: View across the Vltava to the Old Town with the Nostiz Palace in the Foreground 1835
D30776
Turner Bequest CCCIV 76 a
Pencil on cream laid paper, 118 x 190 mm
Watermark ‘[h]onig’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Nosswitz’ top centre, ‘[...]’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch may have been taken in and around Prague’s Petrín Hill (see Tate D30775; Turner Bequest CCCIV 76). The small section of wall visible at top left is possibly the Hunger Wall, built to fortify Petrín Hill during the reign of Emperor Charles IV. The area is verdant, full of trees and shrubs.
Above this sketch is the beginning of a larger view of Prague which continues onto the folio opposite (Tate D30777; Turner Bequest CCCIV 77). Inscribed ‘Nosswitz’, Turner took this view close to Nostitz Palace, a baroque mansion which was once the residence of the noble Nostitz-Reineck family.

Alice Rylance-Watson
December 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘?Prague; Prague: View across the Vltava to the Old Town with the Nostiz Palace 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-prague-view-across-the-vltava-to-the-old-town-with-r1187151, accessed 20 September 2024.