Joseph Mallord William Turner

This page contains two sketches:

i. (main sketch) A quick and scrappy note of a fort in a mountainous valley, overlooking a church spire to the left, perhaps inscribed ‘... Chirto’. This inscription is not readily identifiable with any site in the Val d’Aosta, unless it is Turner’s attempt at interpreting Quincinetto, near Pont St Martin.
ii. (bottom right) A thumbnail study of Chatillon in the Val d’Aosta, looking down on the church with the Castle of Ussel beyond. Turner sketched similar material in greater detail and on a larger scale in Tate D34906; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 412.

The previous sketches in the sketchbook, in the sequence running counter to the numbered order beginning inside the back cover, are of Ivrea. The present sketch and those that follow, also running backwards towards the front of the book, argue a return from Ivrea to Aosta, since the identifiable subjects follow in exact sequence back up the valley and finish with Aosta (D29267; Turner Bequest CCXCIV 29a). With the exceptions of sketches at Fort Bard and Chatillon, these are all scrappy, and appear to have been made in haste, perhaps while travelling by coach.