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 The Ruined Castle at Freyenstein, with Boats on the River Danube 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Ruined Castle at Freyenstein, with Boats on the River Danube’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Verso:
The Ruined Castle at Freyenstein, with Boats on the River Danube 1840
D30075
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 39a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 198 x 127 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Frauentt[...] Thursday Mg’ bottom centre, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are four views here, one above the other, three being inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. With the help of Turner’s inscription, Cecilia Powell has identified them as views on the River Danube, with the ruins of Freyenstein Castle,1 on the south bank near Neustadtl; see under folio 38 verso (D30073) for other views in this sketchbook and from 1833. Turner’s wrote ‘Frauentt[...] Thursday Mg’ (see also the similar note on the recto; D30074), apparently indicating that he reached this point of his voyage upriver on 10 September, between other established points along his itinerary (see the sketchbook’s Introduction).
Although Turner’s Danube route 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; see also Finberg 1909, II, p.969 for Sarmingstein.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Ruined Castle at Freyenstein, with Boats on the River Danube 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-ruined-castle-at-freyenstein-with-boats-on-the-river-r1196925, accessed 20 September 2024.