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 ... > Venice; Passau to Würzburg Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Buildings on a Canal, Venice; a Distant View of Veste Coburg 1840

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Buildings on a Canal, Venice; a Distant View of Veste Coburg’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 3 Verso:
Buildings on a Canal, Venice; a Distant View of Veste Coburg 1840
D31282
Turner Bequest CCCX 3a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 126 x 198 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Ploughing’ towards bottom centre, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, Turner initially used it for a slight view of what is likely a canal (or an open space) in Venice, with buildings receding beyond another in the right foreground.
As noted in the sketchbook’s Introduction, the Venice subjects on its early pages are intermingled with German sketches from Turner’s return journey. Inverted relative to the first drawing at the gutter is what Cecilia Powell has identified as a distant view of the Veste Coburg fortress in the countryside north-east of Coburg;1 on his mid-September visit, the artist has made a written note of ploughing in the foreground, as Finberg noted.2
For the numerous views in and around Coburg in this book, see under folio 1 verso (D31278).3

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.242.
2
See Finberg 1909, II, p.997.
3
See also Powell 1995, pp.72, 82 notes 63 and 64.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Buildings on a Canal, Venice; a Distant View of Veste Coburg 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-buildings-on-a-canal-venice-a-distant-view-of-veste-coburg-r1196072, accessed 17 July 2024.