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: Hradcany, St Nicholas's Church and Charles Bridge, Looking down the Vltava 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Prague: Hradcany, St Nicholas's Church and Charles Bridge, Looking down the Vltava’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 90 Recto:
Prague: Hradcany, St Nicholas's Church and Charles Bridge, Looking down the Vltava 1835
D30802
Turner Bequest CCCIV 90
Pencil on cream laid paper, 118 x 190 mm
Watermark with the Lion of the Seven Provinces
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘90’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCIV–90’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch of Prague was taken from the banks of the Vltava River in the Old Town. Turner looks towards the Hradcany district at right, where Prague’s imperial Castle and the Cathedral of St Vitus are situated. The Cathedral’s tower is visible at top right. Charles Bridge, mounted with the statues of thirty saints, is seen below, along with the baroque dome and spire of St Nicholas’s Church. At left is Petrín Hill, with the tower of the Church of Our Lady Victorious and the distant twin spires of St Lawrence’s Church.
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).
Verso:
Blank.

Alice Rylance-Watson
December 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Prague: Hradcany, St Nicholas's Church and Charles Bridge, Looking down the Vltava 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-hradcany-st-nicholass-church-and-charles-bridge-r1187177, accessed 25 April 2024.