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

The principal prospect shows Hamburg in northern Germany. Drawn from a vantage point on the Jungfernstieg promenade, the view encompasses the churches of Saint James (Jacobikirche) and Saint Peter (Petrikirche). At centre Turner has rendered an isolated jotting of the profiles of two women, one wearing a bonnet and the other with her head turned away.

Parallel to the gutter of the sketchbook is a prospect of Copenhagen. Turner depicts the south-eastern side of Kongens Nytorv Square with the Charlottenborg Palace and Harsdorff’s House to the right. The Charlottenborg was constructed from 1672 for the Norwegian Governor Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve, the illegitimate son of the Danish king Frederik III.1 At the turn of the century the dowager Queen Charlotte Amalie purchased the castle, and by the time of Turner’s visit it 1835 the building was being used as the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.2 A professor at the Academy’s School of Architecture, Caspar Frederik Harsdorff (1735–1799), designed and occupied the neo-classical house to the right of the Charlottenborg known as Harsdorff’s Mansion.3

For more sketches of Hamburg see Tate D30842–D30860, D30862–D30870, D30872, D30874–D30880, D30882–D30886; Turner Bequest CCCV 11a–20a, 21a–25a, 26a, 27a–30a, 31a–33a. For other drawings of Copenhagen see Tate D30824–D30829, D30832–D30833, D30859, D30861, D30873, D30881, D30883, D30887; Turner Bequest CCCV 2–5, 6a–7, 20, 21, 27, 31, 32, 34.