Turner showed two paintings,
Bonneville, Savoy, with Mont Blanc and
Châteaux de St Michael, Bonneville, Savoy at the Royal Academy in 1803. The pictures (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut and Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas) have often been confused and in a lecture in 1977 and subsequently in print, Andrew Wilton reversed the identifications and provenances tentatively given by Butlin and Joll.
2 The Dallas picture, which following Wilton’s logic must be the one bought by the banker Samuel Dobree, is closest to the present drawing. The composition was repeated in another version shown in 1812 (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
3 as well as two finished watercolours, one for Walter Fawkes (on the London art market in 2007)
4 and another for Sir John or Edward Swinburne (British Museum, London).
5 The
Liber Studiorum plate
Bonneville, Savoy also descends from this view although it is closest to the 1812 picture; Forrester considers it ‘uncertain’ whether Turner’s study for the plate (Tate
D08164; Turner Bequest CXVIII J) anticipates or postdates the later oil.
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