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 up the Vltava to Hradcany; Prague: The Old Town from the Vltava with the Tower of its Town Hall 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Prague: View up the Vltava to Hradcany; Prague: The Old Town from the Vltava with the Tower of its Town Hall’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 98 Recto:
Prague: View up the Vltava to Hradcany; Prague: The Old Town from the Vltava with the Tower of its Town Hall 1835
D30815
Turner Bequest CCCIV 98
Pencil on cream laid paper, 118 x 190 mm
Watermark ‘[h]onig’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘T[...]’ bottom left; ‘R[...]’ bottom centre towards right
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘98’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCIV–98’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Prague’s Hradcany district is depicted here, from a vantage point on the Old Town side of the Vltava River. At top centre Prague Castle and St Vitus Cathedral can be seen, surrounded by fortifications. This was the official residence and place of worship for Bohemian Kings and Holy Roman Emperors.
Below the Hradcany view is a sketch of the tower of Prague’s Old Town Hall, continued from the folio opposite (Tate D30814; Turner Bequest CCCIV 97a). Two illegible inscriptions are to the left of the tower.
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 up the Vltava to Hradcany; Prague: The Old Town from the Vltava with the Tower of its Town Hall 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-up-the-vltava-to-hradcany-prague-the-old-town-r1187190, accessed 27 April 2024.