'The Alps (The Alps at Daybreak), for Rogers's 'Poems'', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

The Alps (The Alps at Daybreak), for Rogers's 'Poems'

From Rogers's Poems 1835 Watercolours

Date c.1830-2

MediumWatercolour on paper

Dimensionssupport: 241 x 302 mm

Collection

Tate

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

Reference

D27701

Turner Bequest CCLXXX 184

On loan to Millennium Gallery (Sheffield, UK)

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

The Alps (The Alps at Daybreak), for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1830–2

D27701
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 184

Pencil and watercolour, approximately 120 x 140 mm on white wove paper, 241 x 303 mm
Inscribed by unknown hand in pencil ‘18’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 184’ bottom right-hand edge

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.903, as ‘The Alps at daybreak’.

1966

Adele Holcomb, ‘J.M.W. Turner’s Illustrations to the Poets’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of California, Los Angeles 1966, pp.79, 82, 83, 88–9, 98, 105–6, 189, reproduced fig.42.

1970

Adele Holcomb, ‘The Vignette and the Vortical Composition in Turner’s Oeuvre’, Art Quarterly, vol.32, no.1, 1970, pp.23–4, 26, reproduced fig.10.

1975

Mordechai Omer, Turner and the Poets: Engravings and Watercolours from his Later Period, exhibition catalogue, Marble Hill House, Twickenham 1975, [pp.7–8].

1976

Andrew Wilton, Turner und die Schweiz, exhibition catalogue, Kunsthaus, Zürich 1976, p.13 no.37.

1977

Andrew Wilton, Turner Watercolors: An Exhibition of Works Loaned by The Trustees of the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, Cleveland Museum of Art 1977, p.70 no.51, reproduced.

1979

Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.443 no.1199, reproduced.

1983

Cecilia Powell, ‘Turner’s vignettes and the making of Rogers’ “Italy” ’, Turner Studies, vol.3, no.1, Summer 1983, p.10.

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.291 note 93.

1992

Anne Lyles, Turner: The Fifth Decade: Watercolours 1830–1840, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1992, no.11, pp.11, 13, 49 reproduced, 50.

1993

Jan Piggott, Turner’s Vignettes, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, pp.84 no.20 reproduced, 97, reproduced colour p.75 pl.16.

1997

David Blayney Brown, Yasuhide Shimbata and Hideko Numata, J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: A Tate Gallery Collection Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Yokohama Museum of Art 1997, pp.37, 123 no.64, reproduced (colour).

1997

David Blayney Brown, Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Evelyn Benesch and others, Joseph Mallord William Turner, exhibition catalogue, Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna 1997, pp.36, 258 no.73, reproduced (colour).

2000

Eric Shanes, Evelyn Joll, Ian Warrell and others, Turner: The Great Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, London 2000, pp.16, 43, 179, 184, 186 no no.77, reproduced (colour).

This vignette, The Alps (The Alps at Daybreak), was published in the 1834 edition of Rogers’s Poems and appears as the head-piece to a poem of the same title.1 The engraver was Edward Goodall.2 The illustration provides a stunning complement to Rogers’s four short verses describing an Alpine deer hunt:

The sun-beams streak the azure skies,
And line with light the mountain’s brow:
With hounds and horns the hunters rise,
And chase the roebuck thro’ the snow.

From rock to rock, with giant-bound,
High on their iron poles they pass;
Mute, lest the air, convulsed by sound,
Rend from above a frozen mass.

The goats wind slow their wonted way;
Up craggy steeps and ridges rude;
Marked by the wild wolf for his prey,
From desert cave of hanging wood.

And while the torrent thunders loud,
And as the echoing cliffs reply,
The huts peep o’er the morning-cloud,
Perched, like an eagle’s nest, on high.
(Poems, pp.192–3)

Turner highlighted the last two stanzas with pencil in the margins of his own copy of the 1827 edition of Poems and also made two tiny thumbnail sketches of Alpine scenery, one of which appears to relate quite closely to the final composition (see Tate D36330; Turner Bequest CCCLXVI pp.207–8). The finished vignette shows the hunters with their horns, hounds, and iron poles, in pursuit of a group of fleeing roebuck. In the distance, the artist has included a little hut that may be based on his memory of Blair’s Refuge above the Mer de Glace in Savoy, which he saw in 1802.3 Turner apparently had some difficulty with the forms of the deer in the foreground, and they are said to have been entirely redrawn by the engraver of the print, Edward Goodall.4

The Alps at Daybreak undoubtedly represents one of Turner’s finest and most subtle manipulations of the vignette format. Whilst attending to many of the details mentioned in Rogers’s text, the artist has also created a highly original and visually stunning vignette illustration. The irregular form of the design lends a dynamism to the composition that is in turn heightened by the vortex of light at the centre of the scene and by the absence of a stable horizon line. By allowing the white space in the illustration to merge with the white of the page, Turner creates the impression of an expansive and dazzling snow-filled landscape. The small size of the hunters further accentuates the sublime scale of the surrounding scene.5 More than any other illustration in Rogers’s Poems, The Alps at Daybreak epitomises the praiseworthy qualities that the art critic P.G. Hamerton associated with Turner’s vignettes as a whole:

Of all the artists who ever lived I think it is Turner who treated the vignette most exquisitely ... If you examine a vignette by Turner round its edges, if you can call them edges, you will perceive how exquisitely the objects come out of nothingness into being, and how cautiously, as a general rule, he will avoid anything like too much materialism in his treatment of them until he gets well towards the centre ... Turner’s [vignettes] never seem to be shaped or put on the paper at all, but we feel as if a portion of the beautiful white surface had in some wonderful way begun to glow with the light of genius. 6

Samuel Rogers, Poems, London 1834, p.191.

W.G. Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., vol.II, London 1913, no.395. There is one impression in Tate’s collection (T05122).

Shanes, Joll, Warrell and others 2000, p.186.

Lyles 1992, p.49.

Wilton 1977, p.70.

Philip Gilbert Hamerton, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., London 1879, p.228.

Verso:

Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘29’ top centre and ‘22 | a’ lower centre and ‘CCLXXX.184’ bottom centre. Also in red ink ‘1047’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 184’ 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.