J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

There are two sketches, both made with the page turned horizontally, one above the other. The lower view, extending the full width of the page, shows an elevated prospect across a broad valley, with a tower on a crag to the left and what is probably a church tower below, in the middle distance. Towards the foreground is a vehicle with a square profile, likely Turner’s own coach, from which he was presumably taking a short break.

The smaller view above, separated by vertical and horizontal pencil lines, perhaps shows a different aspect of the same valley. Over half of the pages in this book comprise relatively slight sketches from Turner’s homeward route north through the valleys of the Alps via Trento, Bolzano (Bozen) and Innsbruck. As set out in the Introduction, although his overall itinerary is clear from many identified subjects, they were are not drawn in a single sequence, making the rugged scenes between them difficult to place.