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

The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. As recognised by Cecilia Powell,1 it shows the towers and spires of Regensburg across the River Danube, looking south-west to the cathedral (then lacking the upper stages and taller spires of its west towers), with the twin spires of the Niedermünster church to its east to its left; the long Steinerne Brücke is downstream towards the right, and reprised or continued in more detail at the top right. There are related views on folios 43 verso and 45 verso (D31361, D31365); see also folio 44 verso (D31363), taken from east of the bridge.

Ian Warrell has established that this page in particular informed a light-filled watercolour of the scene,2 with the sun sinking over the river at its centre, which had traditionally been known as ‘Lyons’ and dated to about 1846 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).3 Warrell called it ‘Regensburg from the Danube, with the Cathedral and Stone Bridge, at Sunset’, placing it to about 1840, in line with the sketches.4 He described the scene as looking ‘back over the towers of the city from the Unterer Wöhrt, one of the islands that divide the Danube at the confluence with the Regen’, which is ‘connected to the city by the insubstantial bridge in the foreground; the vulnerability of its wooden piers is very palpably suggested.’5 The wooden bridge was based on the slight forms in the foreground here, which also seem to suggest moored boats.

The watercolour as one of a small group of Regensburg subjects developed from the pencil sketches in the present book, as discussed in its Introduction. For numerous contemporary views of the city in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 18 verso (D31311).6