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 > France, Savoy, Piedmont Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bonneville; Bridge over the River Arve 1802

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bonneville; Bridge over the River Arve’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 48 Recto:
Bonneville; Bridge over the River Arve 1802
D04443
Turner Bequest LXXIII 48
Pencil, lightly touched with white chalk on grey-buff laid paper, 138 x 215 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Villeneuve before Bonvil’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LXXIII 48’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
For Bonneville see especially folio 46 in this sketchbook (D04440), and also folio 47 (D04442). Turner’s view here is the same as in one of the two drawings of Bonneville in his larger St Gothard and Mont Blanc sketchbook (Tate D04599; Turner Bequest LXXV 7), and repeated in the picture exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803 (Dallas Museum of Fine Art).1 Turner’s inscription was presumably added later from memory, and must refer to the Villeneuve near Geneva rather than that in the Val d’Aosta which he also visited in 1802 but is a long way from Bonneville. David Hill, in correspondence with the author,2 has suggested an alternative reading of ‘V’ [that is, Vers or towards] but the inscription clearly reads ‘Villeneuve’.
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.35–6 no.46 (pl.56).
2
Letter to David Blayney Brown, 4 April 2004, Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank

David Blayney Brown
June 2004

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Bonneville; Bridge over the River Arve 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2004, 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-bonneville-bridge-over-the-river-arve-r1133072, accessed 25 April 2024.