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

This page was used for three sketches. At the top is a view from a valley towards steep hills or mountains with a few darker details dashed in, possibly indicating trees or buildings. The other way up across the middle is a similar scene, with loose suggestions of buildings, perhaps a castle above a village. The third view, again inverted relative to the sketchbooks foliation, shows buildings more prominently, but so cursorily that it is unclear whether they are intact or ruined.

This sketchbook covers Turner’s homeward route from Augsburg north-westwards to Rotterdam (see under folios 1 verso and 14 recto respectively; D32543, D32568; CCCXXII 2a, 15). As set out in the Introduction, although his general itinerary is clear from many identified subjects as he travelled down the River Rhine, they were are not drawn in a single sequence, making the less distinctive landscapes, towns and river scenes between them difficult to place.

The setting here is possibly the Alpine Swabian Jura between Ulm and Stuttgart, as Turner likely retraced his route from the outward leg of this tour, although this suggestion is only by association with tentative identifications of the subjects on folios 8 recto and verso (D32556–D32557; CCCXXII 9, 9a) as Geislingen and near Göppingen respectively.