Joseph Mallord William Turner

A Mountain Valley, ?the Susa Valley from the Mont Cenis Road

1836

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In Tate Britain

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Fort Bard Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 104 × 148 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D29264
Turner Bequest CCXCIV 28

Catalogue entry

The two key words of Turner’s inscription identifying the mountain valley in this very quick sketch are illegible; however the composition is similar to the sketch near the beginning of the sketchbook as presently numbered (D29218; Turner Bequest CCXCIV 3a) and possibly (as there) the view west along the Susa valley from the Mont Cenis road, but from a still higher viewpoint. Turner recorded a very similar vista in a watercolour called A View along an Alpine Valley, probably the Val d’Aosta (private collection).1
This page was numbered as the recto by Finberg, although the opposite side (otherwise blank) was numbered in blue ink, possibly by John Ruskin, as the recto, and stamped with the Turner Bequest number accordingly. It has since been rebound, in its correct orientation, as folio 29 verso.
The other (recto) side is also inscribed with the Turner Bequest schedule number ‘357’ bottom right.

David Hill
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.472 no.1432 as ‘View down the Val d'Aosta’.

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