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

Turner used the main part of this folded card cover (see the technical notes below) for a single slight view along a broad river, with a bridge with at least three arches in the middle distance, perhaps a tower or trees in the left foreground, and what seems to be an urban skyline with towers on the opposite bank. At the top right, within the folded portion, is a thumbnail sketch with a gabled building at the end of a bridge, and jagged mountains beyond; this is possibly a detail or variant of the left-hand part of the larger view.

The treatment has the hallmarks of a ‘carriage sketch’, snatched on the move, with its clarity further hindered by the rough support. Over half of the pages in this book comprise relatively slight sketches from Turner’s homeward route north through the valleys of the Alps via Trento, Bolzano (Bozen) and Innsbruck. As set out in the Introduction, although his overall itinerary is clear from many identified subjects, they were are not drawn in a single sequence, making the scenes around them difficult to place.

Technical notes:

The support is the low-grade card cover of the sketchbook, with overlaps from the greenish paste-paper outer cover (of the sort normally hidden by a paste-down) evident around the free edges. The actual front cover, regarded horizontally as used for the main sketch here, measures 115 x 204 mm, extending 57 mm upwards (beyond the fore-edge) to form a flap folded twice to protect the page block and reach about a third of the way across the back cover.

Stubs of two green ribbon ties, threaded in and out through slits flanking the folds, are prominent at the top left and centre. A single corresponding ribbon loop can be seen on the back cover (see under D41112).