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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Rotterdam to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Village and Mountains ?in the Dolomites; a Castle on a Crag 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Village and Mountains ?in the Dolomites; a Castle on a Crag’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Verso:
A Village and Mountains ?in the Dolomites; a Castle on a Crag 1840
D32326
Turner Bequest CCCXX 33a
Pencil on white wove paper, 89 x 149 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘B to B’ top centre, and ‘[?Dorf Naher]’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The main drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. The setting appears to be a mountain valley village with a shrine on the right and a spire beyond; a cart crosses a bridge at the centre. Turner’s inscription seems to read ‘Dorf Naher’, meaning ‘village near’ in German, and may be a mishearing or misunderstanding of local information.
At the top left is a thumbnail study with a hilltop castle, apparently with a spire below to its left. The laconic note ‘B to B’ may indicate a spot on the route between Bolzano (Bozen) and Bressanone (Brixen), or between there and Brunico (Bruneck); see respectively folios 29 verso, 31 recto, and 34 verso–35 verso (D32318, 32321, D32328–D32330).
A long sequence of sketches, mostly characterised as ‘Mountains’ by Finberg (with occasional identifications and transcriptions of the place names marked by the artist), lies between folios 7 recto and 76 recto (D32275–D32411).1 See the sketchbook’s Introduction for the likely overall route between Bregenz and Venice.2

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Finberg 1909, II, pp.1030–2.
2
See also Cecilia Powell, Turner in Germany, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1995, pp.65, 81 note 9.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Village and Mountains ?in the Dolomites; a Castle on a Crag 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-village-and-mountains-in-the-dolomites-a-castle-on-a-crag-r1196560, accessed 05 August 2025.