Corner Tower at Tourbillon Castle, Sion, Switzerland

Frederic Edwin Church's architectural study captures the weathered corner tower of Tourbillon Castle perched above Sion in the Swiss Alps. The sketch, rendered in ink with color notations—shaded post, blue-grey, other parts, red-ochre, yellow-brown, light—demonstrates Church's methodical approach to recording European monuments. As a leading Hudson River School painter, Church traveled extensively to sketch landscapes and structures that would inform his monumental studio compositions. This working drawing, with its technical precision and handwritten color reminders, reveals the preparatory labor behind the panoramic canvases that defined American landscape painting in the nineteenth century.