J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This paste-down is one half of a double-page spread, the other being (D33674; Turner Bequest CCCXL 9). The two are precisely continuous, indicating that Turner drew them while the other page was still bound in the sketchbook.1 All the leaves were extracted and separated, D33674 now being mounted, making a direct physical alignment of the two halves currently impracticable. Turner perhaps decided to treat the other half independently, as it is worked up in fluid washes over the pencil outline, while this part was left untinted.

John Ruskin noted of this sketchbook, and doubtless of these pages: ‘One of the pencil sketches is a continuation of a coloured one on another leaf.’2 Cecilia Powell recognised the subject and its two-part aspect, albeit assigning variant titles in terms of the respective orientations, calling this part ‘Passau: view up the Danube’.3 The viewpoint is a little west of where a viewing platform off the Unterer Längsweg path along the slopes below the Oberhaus fortress provides a near-equivalent elevated prospect south over the river today, albeit obstructed to left and right by thick trees.

The river runs in the foreground, receding upstream under the lightly indicated arches of the Maxbrücke, since replaced by the Schanzlbrücke a little further off. On the Altstadt peninsula beyond it, the most prominent structure is the tall tower of St Paul’s Church. The twin west towers of St Stephen’s Cathedral, since extended upwards and topped with onion domes, are shown almost incidentally at the left-hand edge, formerly the gutter; the greater part of the building is continued on the other page. The broad, loosely outlined feature among the hills above St Paul’s is the River Inn, approaching from the south-east (where it marks the border between Austria on the left and Germany on the right), before curving eastwards to the confluence with the Danube, shown in the other half of the view.

There is a similar (albeit disjointed) panoramic view from a little to the west in the contemporary Venice; Passau to Würzburg sketchbook (Tate D31409, D31411; Turner Bequest CCCX 67a, 68a). For other views of Passau from this tour, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.

Technical notes:

As noted above, this is the rear paste-down of the sketchbook, its white wove paper being laminated to the brown card outer cover. The sheet is continuous with the corresponding paste-down at the other end of the sketchbook (Tate D40436), which is blank except for a minor inscription. The leaves between comprised a single folded gathering, stitched together with these endpapers, before the outer card was applied over the stitching. At some stage the whole page block was likely torn out in one go, albeit carefully, as there are ragged narrow slits along the gutter where the threads were pulled out along with the pages.

At the outer edge here there are adventitious blots of grey watercolour which have flooded over from work on a previous page while it was bound within the book.