'Aosta, for Rogers's 'Italy'', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Aosta, for Rogers's 'Italy'

From Rogers's Italy 1830 Watercolours

Date c.1826

MediumGraphite and watercolour on paper

Dimensionssupport: 239 x 302 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D27662

Turner Bequest CCLXXX 145

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Aosta, for Rogers’s ‘Italy’ circa 1826

D27662
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 145

Pencil and watercolour, approximately 152 x 170 mm on white wove paper, 236 x 302 mm
Inscribed by the artist in black watercolour ‘1826’ on base of cross in foreground of vignette
Inscribed by ?Henry le Keux in pencil ‘1814’ bottom centre and short pencil marks along the right and bottom edges of the sheet
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 145’ bottom right

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Exhibition history

References

1903

E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume I: Early Prose Writings 1834–1843, London 1903, pp.233, 244.

1904

E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, pp.380–1.

1906

E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XXI: The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford, London 1906, p.214.

1909

A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings in the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.899, as ‘Aosta’.

1974

Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.99.

1976

David Loshak and Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner, Akvareller og tegninger fra British Museum, exhibition catalogue, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen 1976, no.33 reproduced.

1976

Werner Hofmann, Andrew Wilton, Siegmar Hosten and others, William Turner und die Landschaft seiner Zeit, exhibition catalogue, Hamburger Kunsthalle 1976, no.51 reproduced.

1979

Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, pp.437–8 no.1158, reproduced.

1983

Cecilia Powell, ‘Turner’s vignettes and the making of Rogers’s “Italy” ’, Turner Studies, vol.3, no.1, Summer 1983, p.3.

1984

Cecilia Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, p.275 note 19.

1991

Ian Warrell, Turner: The Fourth Decade: Watercolours 1820–1830, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1991, pp.44, 53 no.52, reproduced.

1992

David Hill, Turner in the Alps: The Journey through France & Switzerland in 1802, London 1992, pp.82–4.

1993

Jan Piggott, Turner’s Vignettes, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, p.96.

2002

David Blayney Brown, Turner in the Tate Collection, London 2002, pp.122–3, reproduced fig.77 (colour).

This vignette, engraved by Henry le Keux, is one of two designs that Turner made to illustrate the seventh section of Rogers’s Italy, entitled ‘Marguerite de Tours.’1 In this section, Rogers tells the story of the eponymous heroine, who grew up in the Val d’Aosta but eloped with a young man from Martigny, a town located on the opposite side of the Great St Bernard Pass:

She was born
(Such was her artless tale, told with fresh tears)
In Val d’Aosta; and an Alpine stream,
Leaping from crag to crag in its short course
To join the Dora, turned her father’s mill.
There did she blossom till a Valaisan,
A townsman of Martigny, won her heart,
Much to the old man’s grief. Long he refused,
Loth to be left; disconsolate at the thought.
She was his only one, his link to life;
And in despair – year after year gone by –
One summer-morn, they stole a match and fled.
The act was sudden; and when far away,
her spirit had misgivings. Then, full oft,
She pictured to herself that aged face
Sickly and wan, in sorrow, not in wrath;
And, when at last she heard his hour was near,
Went forth unseen, and, burdened as she was,
Crossed the high Alps on foot to ask forgiveness,
And hold him to her heart before he died.
(Italy, p.27)

Although Marguerite herself does not figure in either of Turner’s illustrations the book’s layout dramatises her movement between the two towns: the section opens with Aosta as its headpiece and closes with a view of Martigny (see Tate D27671; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 154). When the narrator encounters Marguerite, she has returned to Italy to make peace with her dying father and is now beginning her arduous journey back across the Alps.

Situated at the foot of the Great St Bernard Pass, Aosta is a Roman city that has long occupied a key position for European trade and travel. Part of the city’s surviving Roman walls and the magnificent triumphal Arch of Augustus, built in 25 BC, are visible in the foreground. Turner visited Aosta himself during his 1802 trip to the Continent, producing several sketches that may have served him when he designed this vignette over two decades later (see Tate D04502 and D04503; Turner Bequest LXXIV 10 and LXXIV 11).2 Although he may well have referred to these sketches, he also made significant changes to the topography of the city in order to include a number of landmarks in the small space provided. Most notably he added walls to both sides of the arch of Augustus and turned the triple-arched form of the decaying Roman theatre ninety degrees.3 In producing the Italy vignettes, it was not uncommon for Turner to generate a condensed and evocative, if not entirely accurate portrait of a subject that he had previously observed and sketched first-hand. As Cecilia Powell writes, ‘the reason that the Italy illustrations were so popular with generations of English travellers and Italy lovers was not their topographical accuracy (which was in any case variable) ... It was Turner’s poetical concentration of the essence of Italy into the space of a few inches.’⁴

Even so, Turner could also be remarkably scrupulous in the execution of certain details. The second engraver’s proof for Aosta bears a note from Turner instructing le Keux to correct the order of the capitals on the arch by changing them from Ionic to Corinthian.5 A more obvious difference between the watercolour and engraved version is in the date that appears on the cross in the foreground. In the original vignette, the cross bears the date ‘1826’, which probably indicates the year of the vignette’s production; Aosta is thematically and stylistically linked to Martigny, which was made on paper watermarked 1826.6 In the engraving, however, this date has been changed to ‘1814’, the year when Rogers himself was in Italy. The cross is perhaps intended to represent the grave of Marguerite’s father, who, we are told, had died shortly before Rogers made her acquaintance.

Samuel Rogers, Italy, London 1830, p.25; W.G. Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. vol.II, London 1913, no.354. There are two impressions in Tate’s collection (T04640 and T04641).

Warrell 1991, p.53.

Hill 1992, p.84.

Powell 1983, p.6.

Eric M. Lee, Translations: Turner and Printmaking, exhibition catalogue, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven 1993, p.8.

Warrell 1991, p.53.

Verso:

Inscribed in pencil ‘[?7]’ top left and ‘y’ and ‘2a’ centre and ‘CCLXXX.145’ bottom centre
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 145’ lower centre

Meredith Gamer
August 2006

Read this catalogue entry in full

This catalogue entry is part of: David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012.