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 A Ruined Castle among Mountains ?in the Dolomites 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Ruined Castle among Mountains ?in the Dolomites’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 42 Verso:
A Ruined Castle among Mountains ?in the Dolomites 1840
D32344
Turner Bequest CCCXX 42a
Pencil on white wove paper, 149 x 89 mm
Partial watermark ‘& C’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?C...]’ below centre, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are four quick sketches here, made with the page turned both ways up. The top and bottom views show mountains, the latter with a ruined castle in the foreground, possibly with its name scrawled below. The two studies in between appear to show similar aspects of the same building, with a sizeable gap in its wall; it is shown again on folio 43 recto opposite and its verso (D32345–D32346), and likely also on the recto of the present leaf (D32343).
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, ‘A Ruined Castle among Mountains ?in the 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-a-ruined-castle-among-mountains-in-the-dolomites-r1196578, accessed 25 April 2024.