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 > Grenoble Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Martigny: Bridge over the River Drance, with the Chapel of Our Lady of Compassion, and La Bâtiaz 1802

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Martigny: Bridge over the River Drance, with the Chapel of Our Lady of Compassion, and La Bâtiaz’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Martigny: Bridge over the River Drance, with the Chapel of Our Lady of Compassion, and La Bâtiaz 1802
D04494
Turner Bequest LXXIV 2
Pencil, black chalk and white gouache on greyish-buff laid paper, 214 x 284 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXIV V’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s label for this subject is inscribed ‘Le Pont de Martigny dans le Vallais’. He has drawn the bridge over the River Drance, the Chapel of Our Lady of Compassion and the thirteenth-century Castle of La Bâtiaz on its rocky bluff above the town. Worked up with highlights of chalk and gouache and a more detailed rendering of the bridge and castle, the drawing follows an on-the-spot pencil outline from the same sketchbook (D40198). There is another, slightly differently treated finished version from the same source (D40207; Turner Bequest LXXIV P).
Martigny, reached by the St Bernard Pass and along the narrow valley of the Drance, was effectively the halfway point of Turner’s Alpine tour in 1802. The numerous drawings from this sketchbook suggest an extended pause in the town to rest and recoup; see also D04509, D04547 and D04580; Turner Bequest LXXIX 16, 54, 87 for views including La Bâtiaz, while the verso of the present sheet (D40208) has a sketch of the cabriolet that Turner and his travelling companion Newbey Lowson had bought in Paris for their journey and sent on from Geneva to await them at Martigny.
Verso:
See D40208

David Blayney Brown
September 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Martigny: Bridge over the River Drance, with the Chapel of Our Lady of Compassion, and La Bâtiaz 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-martigny-bridge-over-the-river-drance-with-the-chapel-of-our-r1146365, accessed 26 April 2024.