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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Tour to the Alps 1836 > Separate Sheets Associated with the 1836 ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Mont Blanc and the Glacier des Bossons from above Chamonix: Evening 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Mont Blanc and the Glacier des Bossons from above Chamonix: Evening’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Mont Blanc and the Glacier des Bossons from above Chamonix: Evening 1836
D35996
Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 152
Pencil and watercolour on paper, 256 x 280 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCCLXIV–152’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This study relates to Turner’s 1836 tour of the Alps, which he made in the company of the wealthy Scottish landowner H.A.J. Munro of Novar; for more information, see the Introduction to this section.
It is one of a small group of colour studies of Mont Blanc seen from around Chamonix, all of which have a similar colour palette. For the others, see Tate D25439 and D36226 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 316 and CCCLXIV 364); there is a further related sheet in the British Museum, London.1 Turner also made a further study which relates very closely to this one, but shows a dawn light rather than an evening one (Tate D35936; Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 93).2
Turner’s viewpoint in Chamonix seems to be from near the present location of the Brévant cable car station.
1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, London 1979, pp.472–473 no.1440, as ‘Glacier des Bossons’, ?1836.
2
Hill 2000, p.275.
Technical notes:
This sheet was exhibited regularly in the latter part of the nineteenth-century, and some fading has occurred as a result of light exposure.
Verso:
The verso could not be inspected at the time of cataloguing.

Elizabeth Jacklin
August 2019

How to cite

Elizabeth Jacklin, ‘Mont Blanc and the Glacier des Bossons from above Chamonix: Evening 1836 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-mont-blanc-and-the-glacier-des-bossons-from-above-chamonix-r1204627, accessed 09 June 2025.