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 ... > Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Würzburg across the River Main, with the Stift Haug Church, Neumünster, Cathedral and Marienkapelle 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Würzburg across the River Main, with the Stift Haug Church, Neumünster, Cathedral and Marienkapelle’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 79 Verso:
Würzburg across the River Main, with the Stift Haug Church, Neumünster, Cathedral and Marienkapelle 1840
D30611
Turner Bequest CCCIII 78a
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark: Tree of Liberty
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the view ranges east and south-east from the west bank of the River Main, with the Baroque Stift Haug church, the dome of the Neumünster and two of the cathedral’s four spires on the skyline, as Cecilia Powell has noted,1 beyond the defences formerly lining the Kranenkai. The exact viewpoint is uncertain, but was probably off Dreikronenstrasse, along the bastions at the northern perimeter of the Marienberg complex, since much altered, apparently with a turret and wall shaded in the right foreground. At the far right across the Main is the Baroque spire of the Marienkapelle, since rebuilt in Gothic Revival style.
For the extensive sequence of Würzburg views in this sketchbook and others elsewhere, see under folio 72 verso (D30596; CCCIII 71).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.245.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Würzburg across the River Main, with the Stift Haug Church, Neumünster, Cathedral and Marienkapelle 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-wurzburg-across-the-river-main-with-the-stift-haug-church-r1196367, accessed 19 September 2024.