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: The Old Town from the Vltava with the Tower of its Town Hall; Prague: View up the Vltava to Hradcany (in Two Instalments) 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Prague: The Old Town from the Vltava with the Tower of its Town Hall; Prague: View up the Vltava to Hradcany (in Two Instalments)’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 97 Verso:
Prague: The Old Town from the Vltava with the Tower of its Town Hall; Prague: View up the Vltava to Hradcany (in Two Instalments) 1835
D30814
Turner Bequest CCCIV 97 a
Pencil on cream laid paper, 118 x 190 mm
Watermark ‘zo’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘1’ | ‘2’ bottom centre towards left (inverted)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner has produced two sketches of Prague, orientated inversely to one another. The view rendered close to the long edge of the page shows the banks of the Vltava River in the Hradcany district (see Tate D30818; Turner Bequest CCCIV 100). It is drawn in two instalments (labelled ‘1’ and ‘2’) to form one whole view.
The second sketch, which continues onto the folio opposite (Tate D30815; Turner Bequest CCCIV 98), depicts buildings on the banks of the Vltava and the tower of the Old Town Hall beyond. A long boat can be seen moored in the foreground.

Alice Rylance-Watson
December 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Prague: The Old Town from the Vltava with the Tower of its Town Hall; Prague: View up the Vltava to Hradcany (in Two Instalments) 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-the-old-town-from-the-vltava-with-the-tower-of-its-r1187189, accessed 26 April 2024.