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

Like a number of sketches in this book, the drawings here are rather rapid and loose, and consequently present difficulties in interpretation. There appears to be one main landscape sketch running across the page, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, with a group of buildings towards the left and a tower on the hill above, possibly labelled ‘Peveril’. These may be the village of Castleton (although the architectural forms appear quite elaborate if somewhat incoherent, and may have been recorded elsewhere), with the square outline of Peveril’s Castle on the skyline to the south. The smaller sketch squeezed in at the top presumably shows nearby Peak District hills.

It is unclear whether the cursive shapes towards the right are landscape or tree forms. At the bottom right are smaller forms or diagrams, with which the words which may be ‘Odin | Tiny’ appear to be associated. The Odin Sitch stream runs down to Castleton from the nearby Odin Mine below Mam Tor, but whether Turner represents either here is unclear. Possible studies of Odin Mine are on folios 38 verso and 48 recto (D22221, D22239). For other views of Peveril Castle, Castleton and Peak Cavern, see under folio 1 verso (D22152).