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 View from within the Ruins of Burg Hals above St George's Church, with the Oberhaus at Passau to the South-East in the Distance; Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The View from within the Ruins of Burg Hals above St George's Church, with the Oberhaus at Passau to the South-East in the Distance; Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 62 Verso:
The View from within the Ruins of Burg Hals above St George’s Church, with the Oberhaus at Passau to the South-East in the Distance; Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg 1840
D31399
Turner Bequest CCCX 62a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 126 x 198 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The main view was made with the page turned horizontally. As Cecilia Powell has noted,1 it shows the ruins of Burg Hals, on its high ridge within a tight meander of the River Ilz, looking out to the spire of St George’s Church, lightly indicated in the village immediately below, and onwards to the Oberhaus fortress at Passau, on the heights overlooking the mouth of the Ilz where it meets the Danube. There are equally elevated views back from there to Hals in the contemporary Passau and Burg Hals sketchbook (Tate D33669–D33670; Turner Bequest CCCXL 4, 5). For numerous contemporary views of Hals and the ruins on adjacent pages of this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 58 verso (D31391).
At right angles is an unrelated subsequent study of the stepped gable and fenestration of the north front of Schloss Rosenau, in the Itz (sic) Valley about four miles north-east of Coburg. The sketch is continued on folio 63 recto opposite (D31400), with the garden terrace running along that side, among other sketches around the castle and Coburg itself. For the few views of Schloss Rosenau (notable to Turner as the birthplace of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert) in this sketchbook and related works, see under folio 22 recto (D31318).2

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.244.
2
See also ibid., pp.72, 82 note 65.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The View from within the Ruins of Burg Hals above St George’s Church, with the Oberhaus at Passau to the South-East in the Distance; Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg 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-view-from-within-the-ruins-of-burg-hals-above-st-georges-r1196187, accessed 25 April 2024.