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 ... > The Route from Venice: Passau; ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Walhalla, on the River Danube at Donaustauf near Regensburg, at Sunset c.1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Walhalla, on the River Danube at Donaustauf near Regensburg, at Sunset’ c.1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Walhalla, on the River Danube at Donaustauf near Regensburg, at Sunset c.1840
D36174
Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 316
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 245 x 307 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin on blue ink ‘1552’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLXIV – 316’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This atmospheric watercolour shows the River Danube about five miles east of Regensburg in southern Germany. Finberg approached the correct identification with ‘River and bridge. Query Ratisbon’,1 the former English version of the city’s name, and Andrew Wilton first discussed its full significance as a view of the Walhalla monument, noting the ‘grandeur’ of this ‘mysterious, beautiful study’.2 Despite its triangular pediment not being indicated, Cecilia Powell has succinctly described the subject:
... there can be no mistaking the dominant feature on the right: the huge temple of the Walhalla on its hill, rising above a white marble substructure of many tiers and over three hundred steps. Below it lies the Danube with the wooden bridge at Donaustauf, the ruined castle of which looms out of the haze just to the left of the Walhalla. Regensburg lies a few miles upstream, out of sight.3
The small town stands in quiet countryside on the north bank of the river. At the time of Turner’s visit in September 1840, the Greek temple-style monument was nearing completion less than a mile east of the town. Usually rendered as ‘Valhalla’ in English, the mythical hall of Norse gods and heroes would later feature in Wagner’s operatic Ring cycle. The various German states still awaited unification as a nation in 1871; meanwhile, King Ludwig I of Bavaria (ruled 1825–1848), had been planning a Hall of Fame to commemorate prominent Germans since the events of the Napoleonic War had stirred feelings of Romantic nationalism. Marble busts of royal, military, scientific, literary and artistic figures had already been in preparation for many years when building commenced in 1830. Finally opening in October 1842, the Walhalla was designed in the Doric order by the Neo-Classical architect Leo von Klenze, closely modelled on the Parthenon of Athens.4
Turner made numerous pencil sketches, plans and architectural notes of the building and its relationship to the landscape and town in the Venice; Passau to Würzburg sketchbook; see under Tate D31341 (Turner Bequest CCCX 33a). As Powell has noted, no single sketch prefigures this composition, although D31341 ‘shows Donaustauf and its bridge from a similar but closer viewpoint’;5 see also D31344 and D31412 (CCCX 35, 69). On sections of a single sheet of grey paper which also included Regensburg subjects (D32185, D34081, D36150, D36153; CCCXVII 6, CCCXLI 360, CCCLXIV 293, 296), Turner made three pencil and chalk studies of the Walhalla (Tate D34084, D34085, D34093; CCCXLI 363, 364, 371), also included in the present subsection; D34084 shows the interior.
Dating this sheet to circa 1840–2, Powell suggested that it is ‘probably a composition study, made after the artist’s return when he had decided to produce an oil painting of the Walhalla’.6 The Opening of the Wallhalla [sic], 1842 (Tate N00533),7 was executed on a large mahogany panel and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1843, and again in Munich in 1845. There, the juxtapositions are effectively reversed, as the monument features as a relatively minor, distant element on the left, beyond a crowd on the south bank of the Danube in the foreground. Powell has compared the study’s possible function with that of loose watercolour studies of scenes around Coburg, which Turner visited a few days later (Tate D35889, D35948, D36187; Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 49, 105, 329).8
Ian Warrell has subsequently dated the present watercolour more immediately to the 1840 tour or soon afterwards, as adopted here, linking it to three physically similar works showing other Regensburg subjects relating to drawings in the Venice; Passau to Würzburg book,9 as discussed in its Introduction (see also the technical notes below). In particular, compare the one identified by Warrell as ‘Regensburg from the Danube, with the Cathedral and Stone Bridge, at Sunset’10 (traditionally ‘Lyons’; Victoria and Albert Museum, London).11 He has suggested that upon comparison with this Walhalla view ‘it is at once apparent that they evolved together, presumably during or shortly after the visit in 1840’:
Both images are built up in layered washes using the same palette of dulled green and a diluted pinky-red, with touches of blue. Moreover, the skies in both works have a glorious diffused radiance evoking the end of a late summer day.12
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.1200.
2
See Wilton 1982, pp.56–7.
3
Powell 1995, p.168.
4
This account is based largely on the more detailed information in Powell 1995, pp.70, 179–80; see also Wilton 1982, p.56, Cecilia Powell, ‘Walhalla’ in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann eds., The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.370. Warrell 2007, p.204, and Warrell 2015, p.3.
5
Powell 1995, p.168.
6
Ibid.
7
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.249–50 no.401, pl.410; see also Wilton 1982, p.57, and Warrell 2007, p.206.
8
See Powell 1995, p.168.
9
See Warrell 2015, pp.3–7.
10
See ibid., p.6.
11
As given (albeit with discussion of other possibilities) in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.487 no.1555, pl.256
12
Warrell 2015, p.6.
Technical notes:
There has been some stopping-out with gum arabic to reserve areas below the building and for reflections.
The royal quarto-sized sheet is of the same ‘C[harles] Ansell’ paper, manufactured by John Muggeridge (from the family formerly in partnership with Ansell)1 at Carshalton in Surrey, as an unfinished view of Regensburg’s Thurn and Taxis Palace (private collection),2 and a subject traditionally known as ‘A conflagration, Lausanne’ but now recognised as also showing Regensburg (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; see under folio 41 verso; D31357).3 ‘Subject to further research’, they may be from the same original sheet;4 Ian Warrell subsequently linked the Regensburg sunset view discussed above as a possible fourth quarter.5 ‘Ansell’ paper was also used for numerous 1840 Venice subjects, mostly retained in the Turner Bequest.6
1
See Peter Bower, Turner’s Later Papers: A Study of the Manufacture, Selection and Use of his Drawing Papers 1820–1851, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.80–1.
2
Not in Wilton 1979; Warrell 2015, p.5 fig.4 (colour), as ‘The Thurn und Taxis Palace, with the Obermunster in the Distance, Regensburg’, c.1840.
3
Wilton 1979, p.474 no.1455, reproduced; Warrell 2015, p.4 fig.2, as ‘Regensburg: the Neupfarrplatz at Night, with a Nearby Fire’, c.1840.
4
See Christie’s 2010, p.168 (unsigned entry with input from Ian Warrell, paper conservator Peter Bower and others).
5
See Warrell 2015, p.6.
6
See ‘Appendix: The papers used for Turner’s Venetian Watercolours’ (1840, sections 1 and 2) in Ian Warrell, David Laven, Jan Morris and others, Turner and Venice, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2003, p.259.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘35’ above centre, ‘19 V W’ towards bottom left, and ‘CCCLXIV – 316’ below centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCLXIV – 316’ towards bottom right.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Walhalla, on the River Danube at Donaustauf near Regensburg, at Sunset c.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-walhalla-on-the-river-danube-at-donaustauf-near-r1197094, accessed 24 November 2024.