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: View across the Charles Bridge towards the Little Quarter and Hradcany 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Prague: View across the Charles Bridge towards the Little Quarter and Hradcany’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 85 Recto:
Prague: View across the Charles Bridge towards the Little Quarter and Hradcany 1835
D30792
Turner Bequest CCCIV 85
Pencil on cream laid paper, 118 x 190 mm
Watermark ‘jh[&z]’
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘85’ bottom right, and reinscribed in pencil at a later date and probably by another hand
Stamped in black ‘CCCIV–85’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts the Charles Bridge in Prague, capital of Bohemia. It was constructed under the auspices of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV at the beginning of the fifteenth century. In the late seventeenth to eighteenth centuries the north and south balustrades were mounted with thirty statues of saints, some of which are visible here.
Turner produced several views of Prague on the 1835 tour. For other drawings in this sketchbook 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

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Prague: View across the Charles Bridge towards the Little Quarter and Hradcany 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-view-across-the-charles-bridge-towards-the-little-r1187167, accessed 19 April 2024.