Joseph Mallord William Turner

A Mountain Valley with Castles ?in the Tyrol Alps or Dolomites

1840

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Rotterdam to Venice Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 89 × 149 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D32317
Turner Bequest CCCXX 29

Catalogue entry

The main drawing was made with the page turned horizontally, looking down over a broad mountain valley to what seems to be a ruined castle above the trees on the left, with another castle or a town below the rugged skyline on the far side. Above is a smaller view of similar terrain, with a tower on a crag; this is possibly the castle in the main view from a distant viewpoint within the valley.
A long sequence of sketches, mostly characterised as ‘Mountains’ by Finberg (with occasional identifications and transcriptions of the place names marked by the artist), lies between folios 7 recto and 76 recto (D32275–D32411).1 See the sketchbook’s Introduction for the likely overall route between Bregenz and Venice.2

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Finberg 1909, II, pp.1030–2.
2
See also Cecilia Powell, Turner in Germany, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1995, pp.65, 81 note 9.

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