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

Drawn both ways up, there are several views here, one above the other, continuing to and fro across folio 14 verso opposite (D30029). Cecilia Powell has characterised the drawings in the present sketchbook as generally less refined than those in the 1833 Salzburg and Danube book (Tate; Turner Bequest CCC);1 in discussing folios 14 verso–16 recto (D30029–D30032),2 she has observed: ‘Sometimes the cause is accounted for by Turner himself, as in the group of sketches of the Wachau’, the Danube valley between Krems and Melk, marked ‘“begun in the moonlight at St Michael’s” [on folio 14 verso opposite; D30029]; the adjacent pages of rugged silhouettes have an eerie quality wholly consistent with night-time on the river.’3

As indicated by Turner’s inscriptions on the opposite page,4 the drawings here were made around Rossatz-Arnsdorf,5 on the south bank near Krems, and the fortified Sankt Michael church, a little way upriver to the south-west at Mosinghof, on the north bank near Weissenkirchen; for other views of both from this journey and the 1833 tour, see under D30029. Also noted towards the bottom right is Spitz, further on again to the south-west past the church; see also the verso and folio 16 recto (D30031–D30032), and the 1833 Salzburg and Danube sketchbook (Tate D30277–D30280; Turner Bequest CCC 75a–77).

The slightly stronger sketch at the top was likely drawn in normal daylight conditions, with a note of clouds above it, and seems to be labelled to indicate the monastery of Stift Säusenstein, on the east bank north-east of Ybbs, roughly twenty miles on again from Spitz; see also folio 16 verso (D30033). 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.

Hardy George incorrectly associated this subject and the sketchbook in general with Turner’s 1833 journey down the same stretch of the river.6