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 > Turin, Como, Lugarno, Maggiore ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Three Sketches of Val Divedro, on the Road to the Simplon Pass 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Sketches of Val Divedro, on the Road to the Simplon Pass’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 87 Verso:
Three Sketches of Val Divedro, on the Road to the Simplon Pass 1819
D14313
Turner Bequest CLXXIV 86 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 186 x 111 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[?Do...]’ bottom right of centre sketch
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains three sketches, all of which show views within the Val Divedro (Valley of Divedro or Simplon Valley), which lies between Gondo and Crevoladossola near the Swiss/Italian border. Turner travelled through the valley en route to the Simplon Pass in the Swiss Alps. The bottom sketch has been executed parallel with the spine of the sketchbook. The drawings are generally too rough to be conclusively identified. However, the buildings visible within the central study resemble those in a view of the pass and custom house at Isella by James Hakewill.1
For a general discussion of Turner’s journey to the Simplon Pass see the introduction to the sketchbook, and also the introduction to the Passage of the Simplon sketchbook (Tate, Turner Bequest CXCIV).

Nicola Moorby
January 2013

1
See Tony Cubberley and Luke Herrmann, Twilight of the Grand Tour: A Catalogue of the drawings by James Hakewill in the British School at Rome Library, Rome 1992, no.1.36, p.110, reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Three Sketches of Val Divedro, on the Road to the Simplon Pass 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-three-sketches-of-val-divedro-on-the-road-to-the-simplon-r1142834, accessed 26 April 2024.