Joseph Mallord William Turner

The subject of this sketch is the village of Simplon (Simplon-dorf), which lies within a valley approximately nine miles south of the Simplon pass in Switzerland. Turner’s view is taken from the road to the north-west, representing the return leg of the journey back to Italy.1 To the left of the village is the small eighteenth-century Church of St Gotthard and rising in the distance beyond are steep mountain peaks which the artist has noted are covered in snow. The composition recalls the conventional approach for nineteenth-century vedute artists,2 and a similar vista can be found on the inside front cover of the sketchbook (D40959).