J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This drawing has been executed with pencil and black chalk with white gouache highlights on a greyish-buff wove paper. The black chalk drawing was applied first, followed by the pencil. The gouache wash was applied last. Strong, swift lines and heavy shading are evident.

The general condition is poor. The top edge of the sheet is roughly torn, probably indicating that it was removed from a sketchbook. There is adhesive residue on the verso – some areas still have fragments of old lining paper attached. There are water stains of the verso in the top left-hand quarter of the sheet. Light damage is visible on the recto. In the past this image was covered with a window mount and displayed in bright light for a prolonged period of time. This damage is irreversible and has permanently faded the colour of the grey wash and made the paper more brown.

It is evident that in the past previous conservation treatments have been carried out on both the recto and verso to try to remove spots of mould or foxing. These treatments then caused lightening of the paper and attempts were then made to reduce this by the application of patches of what appears to be brown oil pastel. Areas of pastel are evident on both sides of the paper but have been applied in larger quantities to the verso; here it has also been used to disguise skinning caused by a backing removal treatment. Conservation treatment in 2008 has reduced the presence of the pastel but much of the damage to the paper is irreversible.

Although stamped with the letter ‘G’, the present drawing is perhaps the one listed by Finberg as ‘Page 12’ of the Grenoble series, which has long been thought to be missing. Turner’s label inscribed ‘Ville de Salle (Salles) Valley de Aoust La Cote Sud de Mt Blanc’ survives. The village and church glimpsed here beneath steep, wooded slopes could belong to La Salle. David Hill has noted that Turner ‘took sketches looking back towards Mont Blanc, of which there is a fine view from above the village with the Castle of Chatelard above to the right’.1 Renaming the drawing ‘Ascent to Cormayeur’ [sic] for the Marlborough House catalogue, John Ruskin described it as ‘Perfectly true to the spot, as indeed most of these [Grenoble] drawings are.2 (Having himself mistakenly abbreviated the spelling of Courmayeur, in a footnote Ruskin remarked that ‘It is amusingly characteristic of Turner that all his mistakes in spelling are economical.’)

Turner noted ‘7 Salle’ in a list of French and Swiss subjects on the back of a random pencil drawing (Tate D08253; Turner Bequest CXX m).

Verso:

Blank