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 Donaustauf and the Walhalla, near Regensburg 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Donaustauf and the Walhalla, near Regensburg’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 38 Recto:
Donaustauf and the Walhalla, near Regensburg 1840
D31350
Turner Bequest CCCX 38
Pencil on cream wove paper, 126 x 198 mm
Partial watermark ‘atman’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘38’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCX – 38’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the view is east along the north side of the Danube Valley, with the ruined castle and spire of St Michael’s Church at Donaustauf in the middle distance, and the rectangular profile of the classical Walhalla memorial on the hill beyond. The subject was identified by Cecilia Powell.1
Powell has compared the prospects here and on folios 42 recto and 43 recto (D31358, D31360) with that in a lithograph by Jakob Alt (1789–1872), plate 39 of the extensive Donau-Ausichten series published between 1819 and the mid-1820s, several of which Turner had copied in thumbnail sketches in the Trieste, Graz and Danube book while staying in Vienna earlier in the tour; in this case, compare one of the four on Tate D30020 (Turner Bequest CCXCIX 10).2
There is a more distant view from the same direction on folio 37 verso opposite (D31349). For numerous contemporary views of Donaustauf, the adjacent Salvator’s Church and the Walhalla in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 33 verso (D31341);3 for nearby Regensburg, see under folio 18 verso (D31311).4

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.243.
2
See ibid., pp.67–8, 81 note 29, 242.
3
See also ibid., pp.70, 82 note 53.
4
See ibid., pp.69, 81 note 45.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Donaustauf and the Walhalla, near Regensburg 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-donaustauf-and-the-walhalla-near-regensburg-r1196138, accessed 23 April 2024.