Joseph Mallord William Turner

This sketch depicts an unknown location within the Swiss mountains somewhere along the route of the Simplon Pass. There is a river or stream in the bottom left-hand corner and a bridge or other structure to the right of the composition. Finberg tentatively deciphered the inscription by the artist in the bottom right-hand corner as indicating the Swiss town of Windisch, near Baden.1 However, Windisch is located approximately one hundred and fifty miles north-east of the Simplon Pass and so cannot be the view depicted here. More recently, Federico Crimi has suggested it may depict the ‘Weissbod[en]’ peak near the village of Simplon.2