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 > St Gothard and Mont Blanc Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Staubbachfall, Lauterbrunnen 1802

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Staubbachfall, Lauterbrunnen’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 32 Recto:
The Staubbachfall, Lauterbrunnen 1802
D04624
Turner Bequest LXXV 32
Pencil, chalk and rubbing out on white wove paper prepared with grey wash, 315 x 473 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘22’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LXXV 32’ bottom left, descending vertically, and again bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Turner’s label for this drawing, also numbered ‘22’, reads ‘Mt Jungfrau, Starback’. For drawings of Lauterbrunnen from this sketchbook see note to D04623; Turner Bequest LXXV 31. As well as a view along the valley floor from near the village, Turner made this drawing from the village itself, depicting its famous feature, the Staubbachfall, one of the highest waterfalls in Europe which seems to overhang the chalets. The peak of the Jungfrau is glimpsed at top left. As David Hill notes, the village had a good inn, the Capricorn, situated opposite the waterfall, where Turner may have stayed.1 Certainly the effect of a sunny summer morning is vividly conveyed in the watercolour Turner based on this drawing, in which he included the water pump by the road and the large chalet (perhaps the inn?) on the right and added village women washing laundry to the foreground – familiar, homely motifs to counterbalance the sublimity of the falls and mountains. The watercolour Fall of the Staubach, in the Valley of Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland was made in 1809 for Walter Fawkes (private collection)2 and listed in the Greenwich sketchbook (Tate D06824; Turner Bequest CII 52).
1
Hill 1992, p.114.
2
Wilton 1979, p.343 no.384.
Verso:
Blank
Inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘246’

David Blayney Brown
October 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The Staubbachfall, Lauterbrunnen 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-staubbachfall-lauterbrunnen-r1146493, accessed 22 September 2024.