Joseph Mallord William Turner

Mountains in the Tyrol Alps

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: 89 × 149 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D32283
Turner Bequest CCCXX 11

Catalogue entry

This rugged, unidentified subject, drawn with the page turned horizontally, seems to be annotated in the sky with an ‘S’ or possibly a ‘G’, with a line leading down to a distant peak. There appear to be towers in the valley below. The setting is presumably the Tyrol Alps, travelling east from Sankt Anton am Arlberg (see folio 10 verso opposite; D32282).

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

See Finberg 1909, II, pp.1030–2.

See also Cecilia Powell, Turner in Germany, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1995, pp.65, 81 note 9.

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