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

This sketch appears to depict a distant view of ruins amidst mountains. The subject is currently unidentified although it may depict one of the many Roman villas found in the vicinity of Tivoli such as the so-called Villa of Brutus, the Villa of Ventidio Basso, the Villa of Cassius or the Villa of Quintilio Varus. The bottom right-hand corner of the page also contains a small part of the drawing from the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 70 verso (D15059; Turner Bequest CLXXIX 70a).

At some point during the nineteenth-century survey of Turner’s sketchbooks this page missed being numbered and its original position was lost. Finberg was forced to place it at the end of his catalogue for this sketchbook and the leaves were rebound in an incorrect order. By reuniting the respective halves of the sketches on the recto and verso the sheet was eventually returned to its correct place but this led to Finberg’s numbering being out of step with the present arrangement, see the introduction to the sketchbook.