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

With the page turned horizontally, this view is dominated by a slender tower on a crag above the steep roofs of a town. The details are relatively slight, but may record the prospect of the medieval Ödenturm watchtower high to the east of Geislingen an der Steige, with the loosely defined ruins of Helfenstein castle on the skyline to the left, north of the tower. Compare an 1841 engraving, Helfenstein und die befestigte Stadt Geisslingen (sic) after E. Mauch, where the hills are shown without their present dense woodland above the walled town, and the stark profile of the Ödenturm’s rocky base seems to match that shown here.

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 well-known subjects between them difficult to place. Geislingen lies between Ulm and Stuttgart, and Turner may have travelled back that way1 from Augsburg through the Alpine Swabian Jura, retracing the route of the tour’s outward leg.

Folio 7 verso opposite (D32555; CCCXXII 8a) perhaps shows hills or mountains nearby, and the verso (D32557) may depict a more distinctive peak near Göppingen, not far north-west of Geislingen. If correct, the two subjects would be the only ones identified between Augsburg and Worms on the Rhine (see folio 61 recto; D32659; CCCXXII 62), roughly 140 miles to the north-west as the crow flies.

Technical notes:

The pale brown staining at the centre of the outer edge is owing to the leaf’s proximity to the leather pencil loop anchored under the front paste-down (D32541; CCCXXII 1).