Joseph Mallord William Turner

Two Sketches: Looking down the Susa Valley from the Mont Cenis Road, with the Sacra di San Michele in the Distance; Lake and Hospice at the Mont Cenis Pass

1836

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
Fort Bard Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 104 × 148 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D29367
Turner Bequest CCXCIV 84 a

Catalogue entry

This page contains two sketches:
i. (main sketch) Looking along the Susa valley from the Mont Cenis Road, with the Sacra di San Michele in at the foot of the Susa valley in the distance; inscribed ‘Suza’ [sic]. The same vista is recorded at intervals in several other sketches in this sketchbook (for example D29360; Turner Bequest CCXCIV 81) and in a watercolour sometimes called A View along an Alpine Valley, probably the Val d’Aosta (private collection).1
ii. (above right) A thumbnail sketch of a plain between hills with distant mountains, inscribed ‘Cenis’, and probably depicting the lake and hospice at the Mont Cenis Pass. Both sketches are hurried and unsteady, and were possibly taken on the move or from a coach.

David Hill
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, London 1979, p.472 no.1432 as ‘View down the Val d’Aosta’.

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right

In the shop

Browse the shop