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 Distant View of Prague with a Monument in the Foreground 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant View of Prague with a Monument in the Foreground’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 84 Recto:
Distant View of Prague with a Monument in the Foreground 1835
D30790
Turner Bequest CCCIV 84
Pencil on cream laid paper, 118 x 190 mm
Watermark with the Lion of the Seven Provinces
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[...] CC Die Juli 1804’ bottom left
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘84’ bottom right, the number ‘4’ has reinscribed in pencil at a later date and probably by another hand
Stamped in black ‘CCCIV–84’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This view of Prague appears to have been taken from a vantage point looking towards Petrín Hill, seen at left. The crenellations of the Hunger Wall are suggested with uneven line (see D30789; Turner Bequest CCCIV 83). Beyond the Petrín Hill appears to be the faint profile of the Hradcany and the tower of St Vitus Cathedral.
A monument is rendered in the foreground of the view, with inscriptions from it copied below. Though these are rather illegibly written the text includes the date ‘Juli [July] 1804’. Many monuments were erected across the Habsburg (later the Austrian) Empire during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), to commemorate the approximately two million coalition soldiers killed or wounded.

Alice Rylance-Watson
December 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Distant View of Prague with a Monument 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-distant-view-of-prague-with-a-monument-in-the-foreground-r1187165, accessed 23 April 2024.