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 Marienkapelle, Rathaus, Cathedral and Neubaukirche, Würzburg, from the West Bank of the River Main beside the Alte Mainbrücke 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Marienkapelle, Rathaus, Cathedral and Neubaukirche, Würzburg, from the West Bank of the River Main beside the Alte Mainbrücke’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 88 Recto:
The Marienkapelle, Rathaus, Cathedral and Neubaukirche, Würzburg, from the West Bank of the River Main beside the Alte Mainbrücke 1840
D30628
Turner Bequest CCCIII 87
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘87’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCIII – 87’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘On river bank’): ‘The Old Mainbrücke, Würzburg’.1 Finberg marked another copy in the same way.2 With the page turned horizontally, the view is from just south of the Alte Mainbrücke, with its monumental statues, east to the centre of Würzburg. The skyline is rather laterally compressed, bringing in the spire of the Marienkapelle on the left and the Baroque spire of the Neubaukirche on the right, flanking the tall tower of the Rathaus and the slender spires of the cathedral.3 The jumbled roofs along the Oberer Mainkai opposite have been replaced by more regular structures. What may be fishing nets lean against the bridge near the boats in the foreground.
At the top is a brief continuation of one of the towers of the Marienberg fortress, continued from folio 87 verso opposite (D30627; Turner Bequest CCCIII 86a). 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 Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.981.
2
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.981.
3
See Powell 1995, p.244.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Marienkapelle, Rathaus, Cathedral and Neubaukirche, Würzburg, from the West Bank of the River Main beside the Alte Mainbrücke 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-marienkapelle-rathaus-cathedral-and-neubaukirche-r1196384, accessed 25 April 2024.