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 The Neutor Gateway of the Marienberg, Würzburg, with Churches including the Neumünster and Cathedral in the City Beyond 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Neutor Gateway of the Marienberg, Würzburg, with Churches including the Neumünster and Cathedral in the City Beyond’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 82 Verso:
The Neutor Gateway of the Marienberg, Würzburg, with Churches including the Neumünster and Cathedral in the City Beyond 1840
D30617
Turner Bequest CCCIII 81a
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark (countermark): indecipherable maker’s name
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?3] Washer Women’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the main view is from the slopes north of the Marienberg complex, now a wooded park. Below the main fortress are bastions flanking the heavily articulated Baroque Neutor gateway, reached by a sloping bridge on the hillside. There are slight indications of figures in the foreground, labelled as ‘Washer Women’, perhaps spreading laundry out to dry.
In the distance to the left, east across the River Main in Würzburg itself, are the Baroque dome and towers of the Stift Haug church and the Baroque spire of the Marienkapelle (since rebuilt in Gothic Revival style). Above, as Cecilia Powell has noted,1 are the dome of the Neumünster and the four spires of the cathedral to its east. These are all seen juxtaposed more clearly in the panoramic view from the Marienberg on folio 83 recto opposite (D30618; Turner Bequest CCCIII 82).
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, ‘The Neutor Gateway of the Marienberg, Würzburg, with Churches including the Neumünster and Cathedral in the City 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-the-neutor-gateway-of-the-marienberg-wurzburg-with-churches-r1196373, accessed 27 April 2024.