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

The page was used both horizontally and vertically. The right-hand half is taken up with a swiftly rendered mountain view with a bridge, a few buildings and perhaps a church spire, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. Probably drawn first, it is continued across folio 73 verso opposite (D31739). 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.

The other subject is swiftly rendered, but with enough detail to recognise it as a prospect of the Baroque Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche and the medieval Bayertor gateway, aligned to its south-east, at Landsberg am Lech; the equivalent view is now precluded by later developments. The approach to the tower is flanked by twin turrets with steep spires, as cursorily indicated here.

The west front of the church is shown in the distance in the view of the market place on folio 73 verso opposite (D31739), under which a further subject and the town’s place towards the end of Turner’s use of this sketchbook are discussed. The very tip of a spire in that view is continued up over the gutter towards the bottom left on this page.