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 Mountains with Castles and a Tower ?in the Tyrol Alps or Dolomites 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Mountains with Castles and a Tower ?in the Tyrol Alps or Dolomites’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Recto:
Mountains with Castles and a Tower ?in the Tyrol Alps or Dolomites 1840
D32315
Turner Bequest CCCXX 28
Pencil on white wove paper, 89 x 149 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Erling | a...]’ bottom right and ‘[?M ... M]’ bottom left, upside down
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘28’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXX – 28’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page was used both ways up, with two views of perhaps the same castle on a mountain crag at the top with a separate detail at the top right; at the bottom are another mountainous view and what is likely a tall church tower with buildings around it and a castle on the heights beyond. Turner’s inscriptions, presumably noting place names, have yet to be effectively deciphered.
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, ‘Mountains with Castles and a Tower ?in the Tyrol Alps or Dolomites 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-mountains-with-castles-and-a-tower-in-the-tyrol-alps-or-r1196549, accessed 26 April 2024.