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

The upper two thirds of this page are taken up with a dense array of small, heavily annotated studies of local people and their transport, presumably observed during Turner’s travels through the Alps on his way homeward, as set out in this sketchbook’s Introduction. His notes include the adjective ‘Tyr[o]lese’, a variant of ‘Tyrolean’, indicating that the setting(s) could have been anywhere along the sections of the route through today’s Alto Adige/Südtirol region of northern Italy (beginning not far past Trento) and the Nordtirol region of Austria (extending beyond Innsbruck). The same word is applied to comparable figure studies on folio 20 verso (D31636).

If the slight view with buildings and trees at the top is taken as the actual setting of the first group of figures in traditional costume, described by Finberg as ‘peasants’,1 there are four bands of studies. Loose forms in the left and right may indicate agricultural transport, as shown below, with notes of ‘[... ?Grass Barley]’ at the right.

Below are studies of a woman in a broad hat and a dark dirndl-style broad skirt, two men apparently seated at a table, another man in a dark hat and what may be the back view of a man carrying a heavy load. The notes here are of colours relating to items of clothing: ‘R B [...]’ above and ‘[...] Yellow Blk G [?Jak and T...] | [?L... R... to] | Jackets’ below. Next come two studies of heavily loaded carts marked ‘Two Horses and | a C[...] | [...]’

Lastly, there are more extended notes to the right of an outline costume study: ‘The [...] and arm fills the [?sleeve] | [...] P[...] kept up by [?Braces] | [?S...ting] of a Tyr[o]lese Woman’. 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.