Joseph Mallord William Turner

Sallanches and the River Arve, from the St Martin Road

1802

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 458 × 594 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D04891
Turner Bequest LXXIX Q

Catalogue entry

This sketch was made on one of the large loose sheets of French paper that Turner took with him to France and Switzerland in 1802. It seems to be a larger, looser variant of the view of Sallanches from the road beside the River Arve, looking south over the old town with the church and bridge in the middle distance, drawn by Turner in his St Gothard and Mont Blanc sketchbook (Tate D04604; Turner Bequest LXXV 12). The more finished drawing in the sketchbook was chosen as a basis of a watercolour made for Walter Fawkes (private collection),1 which has been variously dated between 1805 2 and 1815 3 and is presumably the ‘St Martin’s brig’ [sic] cited in a list of Alpine subjects (verso of Tate D08253; Turner Bequest CXX m).4 The watercolour was shown as ‘St Martin and Salenche, Savoy’ in Fawkes’s exhibition of his collection at his town house at 45 Grosvenor Place in 1819.

Wilton 1979, pp.342–3 no.380.

Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.48.

Eric Shanes, ‘Identifying Turner’s Chamonix Water-colours’, The Burlington Magazine, vol.142 no.1172, November 2000, p.694.

Hill, Warburton and Tussey 1980, p.59.

Technical notes:

For the French paper see D04885.

Verso:

Laid down

David Blayney Brown
January 2012

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