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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Towers and a Spire among Mountains ?in the Tyrol Alps 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Verso:
Towers and a Spire among Mountains ?in the Tyrol Alps 1840
D32304
Turner Bequest CCCXX 22a
Pencil on white wove paper, 89 x 149 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The larger drawing, with a spire and apparently other buildings, was made with the page turned horizontally. To the left, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, is a smaller study of what may be a ruined castle in a rugged setting, perhaps seen again on folio 23 recto opposite (D32305).
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, ‘Towers and a Spire among Mountains ?in the Tyrol Alps 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-towers-and-a-spire-among-mountains-in-the-tyrol-alps-r1196538, accessed 28 March 2024.