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 Urban Buildings, Perhaps at Graz, with the Mur Suspension Bridge in the Distance; the Schlossberg, Graz, from the North; Hills and Towers 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Urban Buildings, Perhaps at Graz, with the Mur Suspension Bridge in the Distance; the Schlossberg, Graz, from the North; Hills and Towers’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 46 Recto:
Urban Buildings, Perhaps at Graz, with the Mur Suspension Bridge in the Distance; the Schlossberg, Graz, from the North; Hills and Towers 1840
D30088
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 46
Pencil on cream wove paper, 127 x 198 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wha’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘K[...]’ top left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘46’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXCIX – 46’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner used this page for sketches in three different orientations. Turning it horizontally with the gutter at the top, he drew the Schlossberg at Graz from the north,1 with the summit rather awkwardly continued across the gutter a little way onto folio 45 verso opposite (D30087). The other way up is a more detailed townscape, perhaps looking south at Graz to an inconspicuous arc indicating the suspension bridge then crossing the River Mur,2 with the Schlossberg off to the left.
Turner’s views of Graz are mainly concentrated between folios 41 verso and 48 recto (D30079–D30092), and were likely made in reverse of the sketchbook’s present foliated order; see under D30079 for further discussion.3 With the page inverted relative to the foliation, he used the remaining space for slight sketches of hills and what may be distant castle towers, presumably elsewhere along his Austrian route (see the book’s Introduction).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.240.
2
Ibid.
3
See also ibid., pp.66, 81 note 22.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Urban Buildings, Perhaps at Graz, with the Mur Suspension Bridge in the Distance; the Schlossberg, Graz, from the North; Hills and Towers 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-urban-buildings-perhaps-at-graz-with-the-mur-suspension-r1196938, accessed 24 April 2024.