Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
- Medium
- Graphite, watercolour and gouache on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 229 × 292 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
- Reference
- D33481
Turner Bequest CCCXXXII 11
Display caption
Even though there are several watercolours of Geneva in the Turner Bequest, Ruskin's belief that recent developments had spoiled the city led him to exclude them from his 1857 catalogue. He did, however, make an exception of this view of Geneva from the old walls, which he considered, 'Entirely majestic and beautiful in conception.' Always keen to draw his reader's attention to Turner's technical prowess, he wrote, 'Observe how the bastion in the centre is drawn, owing its whole material existence to little more than the one gleam of light on its angle, obtained by a touch of the brush, through the wet colour, running a little of the tint to its edge, in a dark line which rounds the top of the wall.'
Gallery label, August 2004
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