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

With the page used both inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation and horizontally, there are two complementary sketches, both showing the Maria Himmelfahrt Church at Landsberg am Lech. The view is north along Ludwigstrasse, just off the north-west corner of the market place shown on the verso (D31739), under which a further subject and the town’s place towards the end of Turner’s use of this sketchbook are discussed.

Though his sketches are slight, they suggest that he saw the plain Gothic church much as it appears today across Georg-Hellmair-Platz, with stone dressings framing white stucco walls. There are hints of the sundial just below the gable over the porch, and the Baroque cupola of the bell-tower on the far side of the nave’s steep roof is shown in both views.