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 West Front of Würzburg Cathedral; Pencil Tests 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The West Front of Würzburg Cathedral; Pencil Tests’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 90 Verso:
The West Front of Würzburg Cathedral; Pencil Tests 1840
D41130
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark (countermark): indecipherable maker’s name
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Not listed in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory,1 this largely blank page has been used for pencil tests, with a few parallel hatched lines and zig-zag strokes. Crossing the gutter from the very loose drawing on the rear paste-down opposite (D41129) are what seem to be the tips of Würzburg Cathedral’s twin spires.2
For the extensive sequence of Würzburg views in this sketchbook and others elsewhere, see under folio 72 verso (D30596; Turner Bequest CCCIII 71).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.981.
2
See Powell 1995, p.244.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The West Front of Würzburg Cathedral; Pencil Tests 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-west-front-of-wurzburg-cathedral-pencil-tests-r1196389, accessed 19 April 2024.