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 ... > Trieste, Graz and Danube Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Suspension Bridge at Graz; a Distant Prospect of Vienna; a Wooded Landscape ?with a Spire 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Suspension Bridge at Graz; a Distant Prospect of Vienna; a Wooded Landscape ?with a Spire’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Recto:
The Suspension Bridge at Graz; a Distant Prospect of Vienna; a Wooded Landscape ?with a Spire 1840
D30010
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 5
Pencil on cream wove paper, 198 x 127 mm
Partial watermark ‘atman’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘V’ top centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘5’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCIX – 5’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are three drawings here, made with the page turned three different ways. At the top, as Cecilia Powell recognised,1 is the suspension bridge formerly crossing the River Mur at Graz (see under folio 41 verso; D30079).
Below, horizontally along the gutter, is what Powell has identified as a distant view of Vienna,2 presumably with the spire of St Stephen’s Cathedral beyond trees; see under folio 40 recto (D30076).3 The other way up towards the outer edge is another wooded landscape, possibly with the same spire on the skyline towards the left.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Powell 1995, p.242.
2
Ibid.
3
See also ibid., p.81 note 24.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Suspension Bridge at Graz; a Distant Prospect of Vienna; a Wooded Landscape ?with a Spire 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-suspension-bridge-at-graz-a-distant-prospect-of-vienna-a-r1196860, accessed 17 July 2024.