J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice; Passau to Würzburg Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Spittlertor and Town Walls, Nuremberg; St Lorenz's Church from Karolinenstrasse 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Spittlertor and Town Walls, Nuremberg; St Lorenz's Church from Karolinenstrasse’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Recto:
The Spittlertor and Town Walls, Nuremberg; St Lorenz’s Church from Karolinenstrasse 1840
D31336
Turner Bequest CCCX 31
Pencil on cream wove paper, 126 x 198mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘31’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCX – 31’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the cylindrical Spittlertor and its compound along Nuremberg’s walls are seen from the west, looking over a defensive ditch to where a bridge crosses to a gateway. The ditch has largely been filled in, and the bridge has gone; instead there is one in the foreground, along Ludwigstor, with walkways and grass in the dip on either side. The viewpoint is now the intersection of the city’s ring-road and various other multi-lane routes, and the view is partly obscured by trees. Another aspect of the tower complex is shown on the verso (D31337).
Above the main drawing here is a smaller sketch in another part of the city, looking east along Karolinenstrasse (now lined with modern buildings) to the west front towers of the medieval church of St Lorenz.
These Nuremberg subjects were identified by Cecilia Powell.1 For a few other views of the city in this sketch book and the more extensive sequence from 1835, see under folio 29 recto (D31332).2

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.243.
2
See also ibid., pp.70, 82 note 55.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Spittlertor and Town Walls, Nuremberg; St Lorenz’s Church from Karolinenstrasse 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-spittlertor-and-town-walls-nuremberg-st-lorenzs-church-r1196124, accessed 26 April 2024.