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 Marienberg, Würzburg, from near St Burkard's Church 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Marienberg, Würzburg, from near St Burkard's Church’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 85 Recto:
The Marienberg, Würzburg, from near St Burkard’s Church 1840
D30622
Turner Bequest CCCIII 84
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 170 x 104 mm
Partial watermark (countermark): indecipherable maker’s name
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘84’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCCIII – 84’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Citadel, from below’): ‘Wurzburg’.1 As Cecilia Powell has noted, the Marienberg fortress is seen here from near St Burkard’s Church,2 looking south-west up the steep hill; the narrow vertical format of the sketch conveys the drama of its uncompromisingly geometric bastions, looming over the houses off Saalgasse.
The fortifications are seen from further off in the same direction in various more conventional views on adjacent pages. 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
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.981.
2
See Powell 1995, p.245.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Marienberg, Würzburg, from near St Burkard’s Church 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-marienberg-wurzburg-from-near-st-burkards-church-r1196378, accessed 20 September 2024.