Joseph Mallord William Turner

?The Val d’Aosta near Courmayeur

1802

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
Part of
Grenoble Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 218 × 283 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D04562
Turner Bequest LXXIV 69

Catalogue entry

Finberg listed this as one of 22 leaves from this sketchbook found ‘in a parcel labelled by Mr. Ruskin – “M. 16. Leaves of S. 229. Laid down.” They have been mounted on cartridge by Mr. Ruskin.’ Evidently, Ruskin isolated these drawings because they were pencil outlines, without the additions of chalk or gouache found elsewhere in the sketchbook.
Finberg’s idea that the drawing was made near Courmayeur seems plausible. The suggestion of a road driving directly along the valley floor from the immediate foreground is similar to the road in the watercolour St Huges Denouncing Vengeance on the Shepherd of Cormayer, in the Valley of d’Aoust (Sir John Soane’s Museum, London),1 exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803.
1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.341 no.364.
Verso:
Laid down

David Blayney Brown
September 2011

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right