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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Switzerland 1802 > Lake Thun Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Lake Thun from Neuhaus; Storm over the Lake 1802

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lake Thun from Neuhaus; Storm over the Lake’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 60 Recto:
Lake Thun from Neuhaus; Storm over the Lake 1802
D04717
Turner Bequest LXXVI 60
Pencil on white laid paper, 156 x 201 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXVI 60’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Neuhaus was Turner’s landing place at the far end of Lake Thun. As David Hill notes, there was a small hut or ‘cabaret’ at the landing stage, where he paused to make some sketches, probably while sheltering from the storm seen here. Storm clouds, indicated by swift hatching, roll over the Niesen in the left distance and a single sharply curving line describes a bolt of lightning falling to the water in front of the Stockhorn on the right. To his artist-colleague Joseph Farington, Turner reported the impression made upon him by the ‘very fine Thunder Storms’1 he had experienced in the Swiss mountains, one which endured long enough also to be remembered by John Ruskin.2
The sketch formed the basis of a watercolour made for Walter Fawkes (on the London art market, 2007)3, in which the storm and lightning were developed to dramatic effect and, together with soldiers in the right foreground who might be unloading guns and shot, presumably alluded to the French occupation of Switzerland and to local resistance. Turner’s reworking for Fawkes of his sketch of the landing place at Fluelen on Lake Lucerne on folio 41 (D04698) contains a similar reference, in the form of a weeping woman. The view of Lake Thun also became a plate in the Liber Studiorum, with a soldier added to the centre foreground; Turner’s drawing for it is Tate D08119; Turner Bequest CXVI R).
1
Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre eds., The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol.V, New Haven and London 1980, p.1889.
2
John Ruskin, Notes by Mr Ruskin on His Collection of Drawings by the Late J.M.W. Turner, R.A., Exhibited at the Fine Art Society’s Galleries, London 1878, pp.17–18.
3
Wilton 1979, p.342 no.373; Sotheby’s, 4 July 2007 (lot 12).
Verso:
Blank
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘587’ top left, descending vertically

David Blayney Brown
October 2009

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Lake Thun from Neuhaus; Storm over the Lake 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-lake-thun-from-neuhaus-storm-over-the-lake-r1133193, accessed 20 April 2024.