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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > France c.1826-41 > France: Identified or Likely Subjects ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Mountains with Buildings beside a Road, Possibly near Chamonix c.1836

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Mountains with Buildings beside a Road, Possibly near Chamonix’ c.1836
Mountains with Buildings beside a Road, Possibly near Chamonix c.1836
D33715
Turner Bequest CCCXLI 36
Chalk and pencil on buff wove paper, 135 x 191 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Aiguille[s?]’ towards bottom centre
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘36’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLI - 36’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This loose sketch of mountain scenery includes buildings highlighted in white chalk and a road sweeping into the foreground. Turner’s inscription ‘Aiguille[s?]’ points to a location near Chamonix in the French Alps, close to the Aiguille du Midi summit.
Turner first visited Chamonix in 1802 and returned on a tour through France to Switzerland in 1836, when this sketch was possibly executed; see David Blayney Brown and David Hill’s detailed coverage elsewhere in the present catalogue.1 Mountain topography is a recurring theme in Turner’s works on paper; he rendered these immense natural forms in a range of media, from cursory sketches to watercolour studies.2
Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest groups this drawing among a ‘number of sketches of mountain scenery, mostly unidentified. Among them are probably German subjects, in the neighbourhood of the Rhine and Danube, scenes in the Austrian Alps and in North Italy, as well as scenes in Switzerland and elsewhere’.3 See the Introduction for general remarks on this grouping.
1
See also chronology of events in Andrew Wilton, Turner in his Time, London 2006, p.228.
2
On the sublime associations of mountains and Turner’s depictions of them, see Andrew Wilton, Turner and the Sublime, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 1980, p.29, and Inés Richter-Musso, ‘Earth’ in Richter-Musso, Ortrud Westheider and others, Turner and the Elements, exhibition catalogue, Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg 2011, pp.90–6.
3
Finberg 1909, II, p.1066.
Verso:
Blank, except for pencil inscription ‘234 | O’ towards bottom right.

Hannah Kaspar
April 2024

How to cite

Hannah Kaspar, ‘Mountains with Buildings beside a Road, Possibly near Chamonix c.1836’, catalogue entry, April 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/mountains-with-buildings-beside-a-road-possibly-near-chamonix-r1209260, accessed 02 April 2026.