Joseph Mallord William Turner

?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains

c.1828–44

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 91 × 229 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D34623
Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 211v

Catalogue entry

These vigorously rendered mountainous subjects, possibly drawn with the sheet turned all four ways, are unidentified despite Turner’s assertive inscriptions, 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 mountain drawing on the recto (D34622; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 211); the views were made on one half of a folded sheet, with D34620 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 210) opposite the present sketch and D34621 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 210v) on its verso.

Finberg noted: ‘(Nos. [Turner Bequest CCCXLIV] 174–226 were among the contents of a parcel endorsed by Mr. [John] Ruskin, – “B. 2. Forty-eight pieces of paper, some double or 4-ple. Pencil outline, same class as B. 1.”).’1

Matthew Imms
February 2016

Finberg 1909, II, p.1123.

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