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 ... > Trieste, Graz and Danube Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Views on the River Danube: The Leopoldsberg, near Vienna; Mauthausen, near Linz 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Views on the River Danube: The Leopoldsberg, near Vienna; Mauthausen, near Linz’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Recto:
Views on the River Danube: The Leopoldsberg, near Vienna; Mauthausen, near Linz 1840
D30049
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 25
Pencil on cream wove paper, 198 x 127 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘V’ towards top left and ‘Leopold[...]’ towards top right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘25’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCIX – 25’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are four views arranged vertically down the page, showing scenes on the River Danube, as identified by Cecilia Powell,1 albeit the subjects of the first and the rest were far apart. At the top is the Leopoldsberg hill on the west bank of the river just north of Vienna; for other views on this occasion and in 1833, see under folio 7 recto (D30014).
Separated by a pencil line, at least two if not all three of the remaining sketches show Mauthausen, roughly a hundred miles to the west, on the north bank near Linz; see also folio 24 verso opposite (D30048), under which an earlier sketch is also noted.
Although Turner’s route upriver was straightforward, his somewhat haphazard use of this book to record it was not. For the geographical sequence of identified views between Vienna and Passau (see under folios 40 recto and 31 recto; D30076, D30058), see this sketchbook’s Introduction.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.241.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Views on the River Danube: The Leopoldsberg, near Vienna; Mauthausen, near Linz 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-views-on-the-river-danube-the-leopoldsberg-near-vienna-r1196899, accessed 14 May 2024.