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

The page was used horizontally, both ways up, for three main mountain valley views. The most substantial takes up half the page with the gutter at its foot, with a small tower near the foreground and apparently a related word or two scrawled underneath. To the left of this subject, there are two the other way up, framed by pencil lines, featuring scattered buildings. A thumbnail sketch of what seems to be a church with a tower and perhaps a pedimented portico, orientated in the same way at the middle of the outer edge, perhaps relates to the general view to its right.

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.