Joseph Mallord William Turner

?Northern Italian or Swiss Mountains

c.1828–44

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 229 × 160 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D34755
Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 304

Catalogue entry

These lightly rendered mountainous subjects are unidentified, 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 drawing on the verso (D34756; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 304v); the views were made on one half of a folded sheet, with D34758 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 305v) opposite the present sketch and D34757 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 305) on its recto. For the relationship of these drawings to similar sheets, see the technical notes below.

Technical notes:

Heavy staining affects about a quarter of the surface. There is a hole near the overall centre of the sheet.

As discussed above, the present work is one of four accessioned drawings on a single folded sheet. Finberg listed other similar instances consecutively,1 making a total of twelve drawings of similar subjects made on three quarters (matching at the torn edges) of an original sheet measuring some 317 x 465 mm. The fourth quarter is yet to be identified, but the others are Tate D34759, D34760, D34765 and D34766 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 306, 306v, 309, 309v), and Tate D34761–D34764 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 307, 307v, 308, 308v).

Matthew Imms
February 2016

Finberg 1909, II, pp.1135–6.

Read full Catalogue entry