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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Switzerland 1802 > Lake Thun Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Zurich: the Grossmünster and Rathaus from across the River Limmat, Looking Towards the Lake 1802

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Zurich: the Grossmünster and Rathaus from across the River Limmat, Looking Towards the Lake’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Verso:
Zurich: the Grossmünster and Rathaus from across the River Limmat, Looking Towards the Lake 1802
D04660
Turner Bequest LXXVI 11a
Pencil on white laid paper, 156 x 201 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXVI 11’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
After touring Lake Lucerne and the Reuss valley, Turner went north to Zurich, the starting point for his return along the Rhine. Expanding Finberg’s title, David Hill notes that this is the only view of the city Turner made on this tour, remarking both his ‘general indifference to urban subjects’ and also the expense and dirt of the city’s inns at this period.1 He assumes Turner was in a hurry to get to the resort of Baden, about twelve miles down the river, where he made a number of sketches; see folios 10 and 15 verso of this sketchbook (D04658, D04668) and also, with varying degrees of certainty, folios 57, 58, 59, 63 verso–64, 64 verso–65 (D04714, D04715, D04716, D04721–D04722, D04723–D04724).

David Blayney Brown
March 2004

1
Hill 1992, p.145.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Zurich: the Grossmünster and Rathaus from across the River Limmat, Looking Towards the Lake 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2004, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-zurich-the-grossmunster-and-rathaus-from-across-the-river-r1133135, accessed 21 November 2024.