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

There are perhaps four sketches, the upper three being inverted relative to the book’s foliation, with the last the other way up. The top half reads as a continuous scene, with loose mountain profiles above a village with a church spire, a sequence of dark marks perhaps indicating figures in the middle distance, and (albeit perhaps drawn separately) a local man and woman observed from the back. The rapid sketch captures the man’s tall hat and the woman’s dirndl-style costume with puffed sleeves and a broad skirt. There are several such incidental studies scattered through the book, including another on folio 43 recto opposite (D31681); see the entry for the inside of the back cover (D41112), where a few figures are shown on a larger scale.

Below are two more mountain valley sketches, again with church spires, although it is difficult to tell whether it is the same feature as in the first drawing; there is also a castle beside the last of the spires, possibly observed separately. Turner’s largely illegible inscription is likely an associated place name. The bottom sketch shows a profile of mountains without other distinctive features, possibly continued from folio 43 recto opposite (D31681), where a scrawled label may indicate a view in the vicinity of Chiusa (Klausen), between Bolzano (Bozen) and Bressanone (Brixen). 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 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.