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

This is one of twenty-eight sketches of mountain scenes (some including castles and other buildings) on the rectos and versos of sixteen pieces of grey paper torn carefully from a single sheet; they were likely all made in the vicinity of Innsbruck within a short period around 23 September 1833, when Turner was travelling back from Venice towards the end of his tour, as discussed in the Introduction to the present subsection.1

Here there are slight indications of a spire and what may be a castle in the middle distance, below peaks silhouetted against a sky bright with white chalk. This has the spontaneity of an immediate observation, reinforced by Turner’s note below: ‘Last gleam of Sun on M[...]’. Rather than Finberg’s tentative offering of ‘Mexelis’,2 Turner’s last scrawled word may simply be ‘Mountains’. Compare, conversely, the effect of dawn coming up behind the mountains in an 1802 watercolour study in the St Gothard and Mont Blanc sketchbook (Tate D04616; Turner Bequest LXXV 24). There are extensive notes of light and colour elsewhere in this grouping; see D33696 and D33866 (CCCXLI 18, 170v).

The verso is D33848 (CCCXLI 159v), where the subject, inverted relative to this one, is Burg Fragenstein, at Zirl. The present subject is possibly on the approach to the town along the broad Inn Valley about seven miles on from Innsbruck on Turner’s route through the last of the Alps, with the castle, north of the town, on the right; see under the verso for confirmed views.

Technical notes:

There is some brown staining.