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 ... > Hamburg and Copenhagen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Copenhagen: The Round Tower as Seen from Store Kannikestraede, plus a Detail of its Doorway and One of a Window; Hamburg: The Niederhafen from the West 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Copenhagen: The Round Tower as Seen from Store Kannikestraede, plus a Detail of its Doorway and One of a Window; Hamburg: The Niederhafen from the West’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 21 Recto:
Copenhagen: The Round Tower as Seen from Store Kannikestraede, plus a Detail of its Doorway and One of a Window; Hamburg: The Niederhafen from the West 1835
D30861
Turner Bequest CCCV 21
Pencil on white laid writing paper, 92 x 155 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘doctrinamet | dirige | [Hebrew Script] | in | [Icon] | 16 [Icon] 42’
Partial Watermark: orb ornamented with laurel leaves
Inscribed in red ink by Ruskin ‘21’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCV–21’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The principal sketch shows Hamburg. Turner pictures its Niederhafen or Lower Port from a westerly perspective (see Tate D30858; Turner Bequest CCCV 19a).
The other sketch, rendered with the book turned upside down, depicts Copenhagen University’s Rundetårn or Round Tower. This seventeenth century cylindrical tower was commissioned by King Christian IV as an astronomical observatory.1 A gilded rebus decorates the uppermost façade, transcribed by Turner as: ‘doctrinamet | dirige | [Hebrew Script] | in | [Icon] | 16 [Icon] 42’. Written in Latin and Hebrew with icons of a sword, crown and heart, the rebus translates as ‘Let the Lord guide learning and justice in the heart of Christian IV, crowned 1642’.2
For other drawings of Copenhagen see Tate D30824–D30829, D30832–D30833, D30859, D30861, D30873, D30881, D30883, D30887; Turner Bequest CCCV 2–5, 6a–7, 20, 21, 27, 31, 32, 34.

Alice Rylance-Watson
April 2015

1
‘Short Intro’, The Round Tower, accessed 7 May 2015, http://www.rundetaarn.dk/en/the-tower/facts/
2
‘The Danish Astronomical Observatories’, University of Copenhagen, accessed 7 May 2015, http://www.e-pages.dk/ku/196/38

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Copenhagen: The Round Tower as Seen from Store Kannikestraede, plus a Detail of its Doorway and One of a Window; Hamburg: The Niederhafen from the West 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-copenhagen-the-round-tower-as-seen-from-store-kannikestraede-r1187239, accessed 26 April 2024.