Joseph Mallord William Turner

A Ruined Castle among Mountains ?in the Dolomites

1840

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Rotterdam to Venice Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 149 × 89 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D32343
Turner Bequest CCCXX 42

Catalogue entry

Turner has used the page both ways up for fluid sketches of what is likely the same castle from different angles, dwarfed by the mountainous setting. The same ruined building appears to feature on the verso and on folios 43 recto and verso (D32344–D32346).
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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