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

Turner has divided the inside front cover of the sketchbook into four or five individual sketches featuring views from the road through the Simplon Pass (see the sketchbook introduction). The largest study in the bottom centre and right-hand corner of the page depicts the Swiss village of Simplon (also known as Simplon-dorf), which lies within a valley approximately nine miles south of the pass itself.1 The drawing depicts the village from the north-west (i.e. on the return journey from Switzerland to Italy), and although the details are now partially obscured by the inscribed endorsement of the Turner Bequest executors, the topography is clearly identifiable, with the tower of the eighteenth-century Church of St Gotthard rising above the rooftops of the houses. Visible in the distance are the sharp peaks of the mountains. For further views of Simplon see folio 1 verso and 11 verso (D16891 and D16911). Other sketches on the page are too faint or schematic to be conclusively identified.