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

The page was used horizontally for two views and an array of small figure studies. The main view is eastwards to Castel Telvana, high on the north side of the Valsugana section of the Brenta Valley above ‘Borgo’ Valsugana, as labelled, between Primolano (see folios 13 verso–16 verso; D31622–D31628) and Levico Terme (see the recto; D31635). There are other views with the castle on folios 18 verso and 19 recto (D31632–D31633). For the subject’s place within Turner’s overall homeward itinerary, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.

At the bottom left, framed by pencil lines, is a thumbnail sketch of a ‘Castle near Levico’; seemingly in jagged ruins, it appears to be Castel Selva, high to the north of the village of the same name just east of Levico Terme. One of the sketches on folio 79 verso (D31751) may show another aspect.

Squeezed in above the skyline at the outer edge, there are five or six figure studies of what Finberg called ‘“Tyrolese” peasants’,1 from Turner’s adjective among scattered colour notes in relation to their traditional costume. The artist could have drawn them in the vicinity of the named views here, or considerably later given his somewhat haphazard use of this sketchbook. The same word is used in notes on the page of comparable figure studies on folio 76 recto (D31744); a variant of ‘Tyrolean’, it particularly signifies today’s Alto Adige/Südtirol region of northern Italy (beginning not far past Trento) and the Nordtirol region of Austria (extending beyond Innsbruck), although the artist might have been employing it more generically. There are several such incidental sketches scattered through the book; see under the inside back cover (D41112), where a few figures are shown on a larger scale.