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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Northern Italy or Switzerland c.1828-44 > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Distant Tower among ?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains c.1840-4

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Distant Tower among ?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains’ c.1840-4
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
A Distant Tower among ?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains c.1840–4
D34597
Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 197v
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 153 mm
Partial watermark ‘J Wh | 1’
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This very slight thumbnail sketch, apparently with a tower on a distant peak, is not mentioned in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory;1 the site is unidentified, but may be in the north of Italy or neighbouring Switzerland; see the Introduction to this section for further brief discussion and dating. The full watermark would evidently have been ‘J Whatman | 1837’, matching the ‘atman | 837’ on another sheet in this section (Tate D34563, D34594; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 180, 180v), precluding a date before Turner’s being in the region in 1840.
Finberg noted: ‘(Nos. [Turner Bequest CCCXLIV] 174–226 were among the contents of a parcel endorsed by Mr. [John] Ruskin, – “B. 2. Forty-eight pieces of paper, some double or 4-ple. Pencil outline, same class as B. 1.”).’2

Matthew Imms
February 2016

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.1126.
2
Finberg 1909, II, p.1123.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Distant Tower among ?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains c.1840–4 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-distant-tower-among-northern-italian-or-swiss-mountains-r1183066, accessed 27 April 2024.