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 from the Landing Stage on the Kranenkai beside the River Main near the Pleichertor, with the Alte Mainbrücke and Marienberg Beyond 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Würzburg from the Landing Stage on the Kranenkai beside the River Main near the Pleichertor, with the Alte Mainbrücke and Marienberg Beyond’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 80 Verso:
Würzburg from the Landing Stage on the Kranenkai beside the River Main near the Pleichertor, with the Alte Mainbrücke and Marienberg Beyond 1840
D30613
Turner Bequest CCCIII 79a
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 is south up the River Main along the Kranenkai, with a landing stage in the foreground, as Cecilia Powell has noted.1 The tall, plain Pleichertor frames the view on the left, with lightly indicated towers in central Würzburg beyond; the latter are shown in more detail in a similar view from a little further north on folio 81 recto opposite (D30614; Turner Bequest CCCIII 80).
To the south-west, beyond the Alte Mainbrücke, the extensive hilltop Marienberg fortress is shown; it features in numerous adjacent drawings. Below to its right are the twin spires of the Schottenkirche, with the Baroque spire of the Deutschhauskirche to their left.
See also two views of the defences around the Pliechertor on the recto (D30612). 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 from the Landing Stage on the Kranenkai beside the River Main near the Pleichertor, with the Alte Mainbrücke and Marienberg Beyond 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-from-the-landing-stage-on-the-kranenkai-beside-the-r1196369, accessed 23 April 2024.