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

The most prominent of the various elements here is the cluster of towers, domes and a spire at the centre, drawn with the page turned horizontally. The subject is as yet unidentified and likely represents a town or city along Turner’s homeward route from Venice. Occasionally, however, he had his Continental sketchbooks to hand at other times, and there is a likely fortuitous similarity to certain of his views of Oxford from the east. The largest structure bears a passing resemblance to the tower of Magdalen College: compare for example Tate D28324–D28325 (Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 17a, 18) in the First Mossel and Oxford sketchbook, subsequently used in Europe in 1839.

The significance of the slight landscape sketches to the right and below is unclear; the latter continues a little way across the gutter onto folio 2 recto opposite (D31599), as does the much more careful view on the left here. Made with the pages inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, it shows Castel Firmiano (Schloss Sigmundskron) on the right, to the south-east down the valley of the River Adige (Etsch) south-west of Bolzano (Bozen), with a couple of local inhabitants in the foreground. The carefully rendered peaks of the Dolomites rise in the distance, as seen from around the point where the modern Via Oltradige bridge crosses the river, with the Colle (Kohlern) mountain on the left of this half, south of Bolzano.

The word inscribed below the Castel Firmiano view, apparently relating to the scene and beginning ‘Th’, is unclear, as is the significance of the adjacent number and word at the corner of the page, which may be an ad hoc travel or financial memorandum; much of the opposite page is taken up with the extensive notes typical of the first or last few pages of Turner’s touring sketchbooks. There are further numbers inscribed on the unaccessioned lilac-red endpaper effectively forming the recto of the present page, with ‘[...] | 125 [...]’, upside down at the bottom left relative to the foliation, rendered less legible by offsetting from the paste-paper overlaps inside the front cover (D41110). They may also relate to the notes opposite.

Views around Bolzano and various nearby castles, so picturesquely situated between the Dolomites, the Sarntal Alps to the north and the Nonsberg range to the west, constitute the most extensive sequences in this sketchbook, the majority of which include Castel Firmiano; there are also a few up and down the valley of the Torrente Talvera (Talferbach), to the north-west of the centre of the city. See folios 17 recto, 19 verso, 23 recto–25 recto, 33 recto, 43 verso–50 recto, 88 verso and 93 verso (D31629, D31634, D31641–D31645, D31661, D31682–D31695, D31769, D31779).

Turner had passed this way on the outward journey (see the Vienna up to Venice sketchbook; Tate D31551; Turner Bequest CCCXI 69), and would do so again in 1840, on his meandering way south to Venice. On that occasion he made several atmospheric studies in watercolour and white gouache on grey paper including two rooftop views (presumably from his hotel room), looking past the cathedral spire to the Dolomites (D32189, D36152; CCCXVII 10, CCCLXIV 295); see also D36154–D36156 (CCCLXIV 297, 298, 299), D40178 and D40188.

Technical notes:

The leaf is glued onto the lilac-red laid free endpaper along the top and bottom edges, to form a slim pocket. The same applies to folio 100 at the other end of the book, comprising D31790 and D41111. This part of the continuous red sheet is watermarked ‘P G’ for Pietro Galvani of Pordenone, near Venice; see the sketchbook’s Introduction for its papers and unorthodox construction.1