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 > Fort Bard Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner St Michel de Maurienne, and Three Sketches of the Fort of L'Esseillon in the Maurienne Valley 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘St Michel de Maurienne, and Three Sketches of the Fort of L'Esseillon in the Maurienne Valley’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Verso:
St Michel de Maurienne, and Three Sketches of the Fort of L’Esseillon in the Maurienne Valley 1836
D29224
Turner Bequest CCXCIV 6a
Pencil on white wove paper, 148 x 104 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘St Michel’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains four sketches, drawn with the book held upright:
i. (top) The approaches to ‘St Michel’, St Michel de Maurienne, with a bridge in the foreground and a church and fort to the left; a closer view than the sketch from a similar angle also in this sketchbook (D29227; Turner Bequest CCXCIV 8).
ii. The fort of L'Esseillon from above; the first of a series of thumbnail profiles continued on the facing page (D29225; Turner Bequest CCXCIV 7), the first two of which here visit the viewpoint of the plate (following p.46) in William Brockedon’s Passes of the Alps (published in 1827–9). Turner painted a finished watercolour of The Fort of L’Esseillon (Metropolitan Museum, New York)1 from a similar but distinct viewpoint.
iii. L’Esseillon from above, a nearer view
iv. L’Esseillon from below, the main fort to the left, and the old, round fort to the right.

David Hill
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.474 no.1450 as ‘Sisteron, Basses Alpes’.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘St Michel de Maurienne, and Three Sketches of the Fort of L’Esseillon in the Maurienne Valley 1836 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-st-michel-de-maurienne-and-three-sketches-of-the-fort-of-r1144776, accessed 20 April 2024.