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 A Distant View of Regensburg from the Terrace in Front of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Distant View of Regensburg from the Terrace in Front of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Recto:
A Distant View of Regensburg from the Terrace in Front of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche 1840
D31352
Turner Bequest CCCX 39
Pencil on cream wove paper, 126 x 198 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wh’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘39’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCX – 39’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this horizontal view was identified by Cecilia Powell.1 The prospect to the right is south from the Dreifaltigkeitsberg (Holy Trinity hill) over the Danube Valley to the centre of Regensburg, with the cathedral indicated on the skyline between the right-hand trees. In the left foreground, where Turner has used his customary pictorial lateral compression to an extreme degree, is the south side of the Romanesque porch at the east end of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche, which would have been behind him while he surveyed the distant city. Modern houses now encroach towards the bottom of the foreground slope. Below, as if to reinforce the necessary distortion and develop the scene as a composition, is a thumbnail sketch of the same view.
Turner also made two pencil studies on grey paper from nearby (Tate D34081, D36153; Turner Bequest CCCXLI 360, CCCLXIV 296), developing the first with watercolour to show the sun rising. For numerous contemporary views of Regensburg in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 18 verso (D31311).2

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.243.
2
See also ibid., pp.69, 81 note 45.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Distant View of Regensburg from the Terrace in Front of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche 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-a-distant-view-of-regensburg-from-the-terrace-in-front-of-r1196140, accessed 19 September 2024.