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

In his 1909 Inventory of the Bequest, Finberg tentatively proposed Sarzana on the Ligurian-Tuscan border as the distant hilltop location depicted in this rough sketch.1 More recently, the geographer and Turner research Roland Courtot has proposed instead the village of Trebiano, located between La Spezia and the River Magra.2 Turner’s viewpoint is likely from a road to the south-west; the loosely defined trees in the foreground and the somewhat shaky inscription indicate that he was sketching from a moving carriage. Trebiano is also provisionally identified by Courtot as the subject of folio 36 verso (D21483).