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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Tour to the Alps 1836 > Val d'Aosta Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches near Entreves at the Head of the Val d'Aosta 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Sketches near Entreves at the Head of the Val d'Aosta’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Verso:
Two Sketches near Entreves at the Head of the Val d’Aosta 1836
D29075
Turner Bequest CCXCIII 22a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 190 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Doree’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains two sketches:
i. (main sketch) From the Val Ferret, above La Palud, looking down on Entreves, with Le Chetif to the left, the entrance to the Val Veni at the centre, with the Brenva glacier and Mont Blanc above. Turner sketched similar material in a watercolour study of Brenva Glacier and Mont Blanc from above Entreves Near Courmayeur, Val d’Aosta (Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead)1 and from a slightly higher viewpoint on a preceding page of the sketchbook (D29073; Turner Bequest CCXCIII 21a). He was here returning to a subject that he had first sketched in 1802 (Tate D04469–D04470; Turner Bequest LXXIII 67a–68) and painted in a finished watercolour of Mont Blanc from above Courmayeur (Courtauld Gallery, London)2
ii. (left, drawn with the page in the upright position) A view towards Entreves over the River ‘Doree’ , with the entrance to the Val Veni to the left, the hill of La Pavillion above Entreves, centre and the Val Ferret to the right, taken from above the bridge, close to the start of the walk up to the Val Ferret. Turner has taken an extremely wide angle of view.

David Hill
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p. 473 nos.1444/5.
2
Ibid., p.344 no.393.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Two Sketches near Entreves at the Head of the Val d’Aosta 1836 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-two-sketches-near-entreves-at-the-head-of-the-val-daosta-r1144624, accessed 25 April 2024.