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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?A River Valley with a Spire and Tower; a Profile of Hills 1840

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  • Inside front cover of sketchbook
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A River Valley with a Spire and Tower; a Profile of Hills’ 1840 (Inside front cover of sketchbook)
Inside front cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Front Cover:
?A River Valley with a Spire and Tower; a Profile of Hills 1840
D41128
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘R[...]’ top centre, ‘O[...] W[...]’ bottom left, ascending vertically, and ‘H[...]’ below right of centre
Inscribed by later hands in ink and pencil (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed in pencil ‘CCCIII’ towards bottom right, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCIII’ centre right, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This paste-down was turned horizontally for a rough sketch of what appears to be a valley with a road or river leading from a spire in the foreground to a tower in the distance. The profile or profiles of hills above to the right seem to constitute a separate thumbnail sketch. Brief, scrawled notes may indicate place names, but the specific subjects remain elusive; they but may be around Würzburg, on the River Main, along with the extensive sequence at the other end of this sketchbook (see under folio 72 verso; D30596; CCCIII 71), or from the homeward voyage along the Rhine, which takes up roughly half the book, as set out in the Introduction.
At right-angles to the right, the Turner Bequest executors’ endorsement, written and signed in ink by Henry Scott Trimmer and countersigned by Charles Turner, narrowly avoids the sketches but impinges on one of Turner’s notes: ‘No 314 Contains 88 | Leaves. Sketches in Pencil | on both sides. – | H. S. Trimmer | C Turner’. The pencil initials ‘C.L.E.’ and ‘JPK’ beside the signatures are those of Charles Lock Eastlake and John Prescott Knight.
Technical note:
This page is laminated over a bellows-type expanding pocket lined with heavier mid-blue paper.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A River Valley with a Spire and Tower; a Profile of Hills 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-river-valley-with-a-spire-and-tower-a-profile-of-hills-r1196219, accessed 05 July 2024.