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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches in the Val d'Aosta: Montjovet, Looking down the Valley with Emarese Castle; Towards Verres and Issogne 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Verso:
Two Sketches in the Val d’Aosta: Montjovet, Looking down the Valley with Emarese Castle; Towards Verres and Issogne 1836
D29214
Turner Bequest CCXCIV 1a
Pencil on white wove paper, 104 x 148 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘De Mariss’, ‘Ison’ and ‘V’ [?]
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains two sketches:
i. (main sketch) Montjovet, looking down the Val d’Aosta. Inscribed ‘De Mariss’ indicating Emarese, the name of the village and castle, with the arcades of the road skirting the gorge below the castle, and the church spire of Berriaz in the distant valley beyond. Turner painted a similar, but distinct view in a watercolour study of Montjovet in the Vallee d’Aosta (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin).1 There is another sketch on Emarese on the facing page of the sketchbook (D29215; Turner Bequest CCXCIV 2).
ii. (above, squeezed into the gutter, and inverted in relation to the main sketch) A view along the Val d’Aosta near ‘Ison’ (Issogne) and ‘V’ (perhaps the fort at Verres?).

David Hill
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.473 no.1443, as ‘Stelvio Pass (?)’.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Two Sketches in the Val d’Aosta: Montjovet, Looking down the Valley with Emarese Castle; Towards Verres and Issogne 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-two-sketches-in-the-val-daosta-montjovet-looking-down-the-r1144766, accessed 23 April 2024.