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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Passage of the Simplon Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Old Stockalper Hospice, near the Simplon Pass, Looking South 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Old Stockalper Hospice, near the Simplon Pass, Looking South’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Recto:
Old Stockalper Hospice, near the Simplon Pass, Looking South 1819
D16898
Turner Bequest CXCIV 5
Pencil and grey watercolour wash on white wove paper, 121 x 195 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘5’, bottom left, descending left-hand edge
Stamped in black ‘CXCIV 5’ bottom left, descending left-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The building visible at the heart of this view is the Old Hospice (Alter Spittel), renovated during the seventeenth century by Kaspar Jodok von Stockalper (1609–91) for the relief of travellers through the mountains near the Simplon Pass.1 The hospice, which stands a couple of miles to the south of the pass, was supplanted during the early nineteenth century by a new establishment, built on the orders of Napoleon between 1801 and 1831. Turner’s sketch depicts the view looking south from the hospice down the valley towards the Boshorn and Fletschorn peaks.
For further sketches of the Old Hospice see folios 2 verso and 4 verso (D16893 and D16897).

Nicola Moorby
April 2011

1
First identified by Crimi 2007, p.35.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Old Stockalper Hospice, near the Simplon Pass, Looking South 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-old-stockalper-hospice-near-the-simplon-pass-looking-south-r1132773, accessed 16 April 2024.