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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Northern Italy or Switzerland c.1828-44 > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains c.1828-44

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains’ c.1828-44
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains c.1828–44
D34758
Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 305v
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 160 x 229 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These swift sketches of mountain passes, drawn in varying orientations and with one framed by pencil lines, are unidentified, but may be in the north of Italy or neighbouring Switzerland; see the Introduction to this section for further brief discussion and dating.
There is another drawing on the recto (D34757; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 305); the views were made on one half of a folded sheet, with D34756 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 304v) opposite the present sketch and D34755 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 304) on its recto. For the relationship of these drawings to similar sheets, see the technical notes below.
Technical notes:
Heavy staining affects about a quarter of the surface. There is a hole near the overall centre of the sheet, and another at towards the bottom left.
As discussed above, the present work is one of four accessioned drawings on a single folded sheet. Finberg listed other similar instances consecutively,1 making a total of twelve drawings of similar subjects made on three quarters (matching at the torn edges) of an original sheet measuring some 317 x 465 mm. The fourth quarter is yet to be identified, but the others are Tate D34759, D34760, D34765 and D34766 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 306, 306v, 309, 309v), and Tate D34761–D34764 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 307, 307v, 308, 308v).

Matthew Imms
February 2016

1
Finberg 1909, II, pp.1135–6.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains c.1828–44 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-northern-italian-or-swiss-mountains-r1183079, accessed 16 April 2024.