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, Looking up the River Main from the Alte Mainbrücke, with St Burkard's Church, the Käppele and Marienberg 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Würzburg, Looking up the River Main from the Alte Mainbrücke, with St Burkard's Church, the Käppele and Marienberg’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 86 Verso:
Würzburg, Looking up the River Main from the Alte Mainbrücke, with St Burkard’s Church, the Käppele and Marienberg 1840
D30625
Turner Bequest CCCIII 85a
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 from Würzburg’s Alte Mainbrücke. Loosely outlined on the skyline opposite, as in many other views of the city, is the Marienberg fortress, with the twin spires of St Burkard’s Church below and those of the Käppele on the hillside beyond.1 Above the weir on the left the Oberer Mainkai recedes, with the small disk above presumably indicating the midday sun. There is a more detailed version of the west bank on folio 87 recto opposite (D30626; Turner Bequest CCCIII 86).
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.244.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Würzburg, Looking up the River Main from the Alte Mainbrücke, with St Burkard’s Church, the Käppele and Marienberg 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-looking-up-the-river-main-from-the-alte-mainbrucke-r1196381, accessed 23 September 2024.