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

As recognised by Cecilia Powell,1 Burg Hals is shown high above the village of the same name along the neck of a tight meander of the River Ilz,2 in hilly wooded countryside barely a mile due north of Passau in southern Germany, which Turner reached in mid-September 1840 (see under Tate D28993, D29006, D33871; Turner Bequest CCXCII 46, 57, CCCXLI 174, in this subsection). The view here is to the north-east from the hills just outside the city, with the castle ruins caught in golden sunset beams above raw blues in the valley, and the spire of St George’s Church towards the bottom right; a stroke of white below the castle hints at the river.

The ruins are the focus of six atmospheric colour studies on both brown and grey papers (see also Tate D24776, D28960, D28997, D29011, D36162; Turner Bequest CCLIX 211, CCXCII 13, 49, 60, CCCLXIV 305). They were also drawn in pencil from numerous angles in the contemporary Venice; Passau to Würzburg sketchbook (see under Tate D31391; Turner Bequest CCCX 58a), and on Tate D33667, D33669 and D33670 (Turner Bequest CCCXL 2, 4, 5) in the larger Passau and Burg Hals book, D33667 being developed with watercolour.

Compare in particular D28997, a more finished view from this angle on a slightly smaller sheet of pale grey paper, with its tints suggesting calm sunlight, and figures conversing in the left foreground. The loose cluster of marks in the foreground here likewise suggests two or three people gathered on the brow of the hill. D29011, on a similar sheet, presents the scene more dramatically, with the surrounding landscape evoked through colour alone, its blues merging with low cloud in a lurid sky, seemingly evoking the beginning or end of the day (albeit both works appear to have been affected and perhaps coarsened by water damage, as discussed in the technical notes below).

Technical notes:

Pencil has been used over the colour to add a little detail to the castle ruins.

As is more evident from the back, the sheet is slightly wrinkled, likely as a result of the 1928 Tate Gallery flood, which also appears to have caused the gouache in the sky to run unevenly, creating an unintended mottled effect where the bare paper shows through.

Cecilia Powell observed that Tate D36162 (Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 305), another Burg Hals view, ‘was drawn on an Italian brown paper that had been used by Turner in Venice just a few weeks earlier for several coloured drawings of this size’, citing the present sheet and its variant, D29011 (CCXCII 60) as having ‘strong similarities of style and palette to some of the Venetian drawings’ in Turner Bequest section CCCXIX, with one edge irregular edge of D29011 being ‘a perfect fit’ with Tate D32249 (CCCXIX 1), showing Santa Maria della Salute;1 this was subsequently confirmed by Ian Warrell. As discussed under D32249, they are among numerous mostly Venetian 1840 subjects that Warrell has noted as being on ‘Grey-brown paper produced by an unknown maker (possibly ... a batch made at Fabriano [Italy])’;2 for red-brown Fabriano sheets used for similar subjects, see for example under Tate D32224 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 5).

The present sheet was not expressly listed in this context, but appears to be of the same type. For general discussion of the brown and grey papers Turner used in the Passau area, see the overall Introduction to the tour;3 Powell’s presentation of the direct technical relationship between 1840 German subjects and Venetian views was a key factor in dating the latter to the same year.

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘CCXCII.61’ bottom right.