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 Burg Greifenstein on the River Danube; Distant Views of Burg Kreuzenstein 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Burg Greifenstein on the River Danube; Distant Views of Burg Kreuzenstein’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Recto:
Burg Greifenstein on the River Danube; Distant Views of Burg Kreuzenstein 1840
D30024
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 12
Pencil on cream wove paper, 198 x 127 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘12’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCIX – 12’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are four views here down the page here, with the upper and lower pairs inverted relative to each other; their subjects have all been identified by Cecilia Powell.1 At the top and bottom are two drawings of Burg Greifenstein, on the south bank of the River Danube near Sankt Andrä-Wördern, roughly ten miles north-west of Vienna; for others, see under folio 11 verso opposite (D30023).
In between are slighter views towards Burg Kreuzenstein, above Leobendorf beyond the north bank a couple of miles east of Burg Greifenstein; again, see folio 11 verso opposite (D30023), under which sketches from 1833 are 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.242.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Burg Greifenstein on the River Danube; Distant Views of Burg Kreuzenstein 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-burg-greifenstein-on-the-river-danube-distant-views-of-burg-r1196874, accessed 21 November 2024.