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 ?The Val d'Aosta near Courmayeur 1802

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?The Val d'Aosta near Courmayeur’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
?The Val d’Aosta near Courmayeur 1802
D04562
Turner Bequest LXXIV 69
Pencil on greyish-buff laid paper, 218 x 283 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXIV 69’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg listed this as one of 22 leaves from this sketchbook found ‘in a parcel labelled by Mr. Ruskin – “M. 16. Leaves of S. 229. Laid down.” They have been mounted on cartridge by Mr. Ruskin.’ Evidently, Ruskin isolated these drawings because they were pencil outlines, without the additions of chalk or gouache found elsewhere in the sketchbook.
Finberg’s idea that the drawing was made near Courmayeur seems plausible. The suggestion of a road driving directly along the valley floor from the immediate foreground is similar to the road in the watercolour St Huges Denouncing Vengeance on the Shepherd of Cormayer, in the Valley of d’Aoust (Sir John Soane’s Museum, London),1 exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803.
1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.341 no.364.
Verso:
Laid down

David Blayney Brown
September 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘?The Val d’Aosta near Courmayeur 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-the-val-daosta-near-courmayeur-r1146427, accessed 24 April 2024.