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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Passage of the Simplon Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View of Mountains near the Simplon Pass 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of Mountains near the Simplon Pass’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Recto:
View of Mountains near the Simplon Pass 1819
D16892
Turner Bequest CXCIV 2
Pencil on white wove paper, 121 x 195 mm
Inscribed by the artist ‘[?Windisch]’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXCIV 2’ bottom left, descending left-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts an unknown location within the Swiss mountains somewhere along the route of the Simplon Pass. There is a river or stream in the bottom left-hand corner and a bridge or other structure to the right of the composition. Finberg tentatively deciphered the inscription by the artist in the bottom right-hand corner as indicating the Swiss town of Windisch, near Baden.1 However, Windisch is located approximately one hundred and fifty miles north-east of the Simplon Pass and so cannot be the view depicted here. More recently, Federico Crimi has suggested it may depict the ‘Weissbod[en]’ peak near the village of Simplon.2

Nicola Moorby
April 2011

1
Finberg 1909, p.577.
2
Crimi 2007, p.35 note 46.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of Mountains near the Simplon Pass 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2011, 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-view-of-mountains-near-the-simplon-pass-r1132767, accessed 16 April 2024.