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 Spire, Perhaps at Flirsch, among Mountains in the Tyrol Alps 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Spire, Perhaps at Flirsch, among Mountains in the Tyrol Alps’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Recto:
A Spire, Perhaps at Flirsch, among Mountains in the Tyrol Alps 1840
D32285
Turner Bequest CCCXX 12
Pencil on white wove paper, 89 x 149 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘12’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXX – 12’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. Its setting is presumably the Tyrol Alps, travelling east from Sankt Anton am Arlberg (see folio 10 verso opposite; D32282) towards Landeck (see under folio 16 verso; D32294); the vertical feature at the left may possibly be the Baroque spire of the small church at Flirsch.
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 Spire, Perhaps at Flirsch, among Mountains in the Tyrol Alps 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-spire-perhaps-at-flirsch-among-mountains-in-the-tyrol-alps-r1196520, accessed 17 July 2024.