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 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Spittlertor and Town Walls, Nuremberg’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Verso:
The Spittlertor and Town Walls, Nuremberg 1840
D31337
Turner Bequest CCCX 31a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 126 x 198 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the cylindrical Spittlertor on Nuremberg’s walls is seen from the south, looking over a defensive ditch to where a bridge crosses to an arch at the near corner of the tower’s compound. The ditch has since been filled in at this point, enabling access at ground level; the gateway’s pointed turrets and castellations have been replaced with a pitched roof.
The viewpoint is now along the multi-lane city ring-road, and the view is partly obscured by trees. Another aspect of the tower complex is shown on the recto (D31336). This Nuremberg subject was 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 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-r1196125, accessed 24 September 2024.