Joseph Mallord William Turner

In his catalogue notes for Marlborough House, John Ruskin stated that this drawing of ‘shattered trunks’ was ‘marked ...simply “G.C.” (meaning Grande Chartreuse). It is very noble.’1 One of Turner’s labels is inscribed ‘Gd C’. For display, Ruskin placed the drawing with another, similarly bold, of Grindelwald (D04537; Turner Bequest LXXIV 44) as an antidote to the ‘meek classicism’ of subjects at and near Aosta also exhibited.2 For Turner’s visit to the Chartreuse in 1802 see Introduction to the sketchbook. Trees in the valley near the Grande Chartreuse monastery were regularly felled for timber but also, as Ruskin noted in his diary in June 1849, by avalanches, ‘hurled hither and thither, twisted and mingled in all conditions of form, and all phases of expiring life’.3

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