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 > Val d'Aosta Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches: The Castle at Ham in the Somme Valley and Lake Combal in the Val Veni, Looking towards the Col de la Seigne 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Sketches: The Castle at Ham in the Somme Valley and Lake Combal in the Val Veni, Looking towards the Col de la Seigne’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 69 Recto:
Two Sketches: The Castle at Ham in the Somme Valley and Lake Combal in the Val Veni, Looking towards the Col de la Seigne 1836
D29166
Turner Bequest CCXCIII 69
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 190 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘L Combal’
Inscribed, possibly by John Ruskin, in blue ink ‘69’ bottom left, inverted and ‘320’ top left, inverted
Stamped in brown ‘CCXCIII 69’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains two sketches:
i. (main sketch, inverted in relation to the main numbered sequence of subjects in the sketchbook) The Castle at Ham in the Somme Valley in Northern France. Turner’s travelling companion, H.A.J.Munro of Novar, specifically mentioned that he and Turner had visited Ham in 1836 (see Introduction: Tour to the Alps in 1836). The castle was fairly comprehensively destroyed in the First World War, and only a very small part now survives. It is difficult to relate Turner’s sketch to the site today, but it corresponds exactly to the description of the castle in the Encyclopaedia Britannica for 1911. Turner sketched the same subject on the verso (D29167; Turner Bequest CCXCIII 69a).
ii. (left, drawn with the page upright) A quick thumbnail sketch of the view looking up the Val Veni towards the Col de La Seigne and the Pyramides Calcaires from ‘L[ac] Combal’.

David Hill
June 2010

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Two Sketches: The Castle at Ham in the Somme Valley and Lake Combal in the Val Veni, Looking towards the Col de la Seigne 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-the-castle-at-ham-in-the-somme-valley-and-lake-r1144714, accessed 07 April 2026.