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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Switzerland 1802 > Rhine, Strassburg and Oxford Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Lower Glacier, Grindelwald, with the Eiger 1802

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Lower Glacier, Grindelwald, with the Eiger’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Recto:
The Lower Glacier, Grindelwald, with the Eiger 1802
D04768
Turner Bequest LXXVII 29
Pencil on white wove paper, 154 x 240 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Grin’ bottom right
Inscribed in an unknown hand in pencil ‘29’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LXXVII – 29’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of four sketches of Grindelwald in this sketchbook; see also folios 30, 31 and 32 (D04770, D04771, D04772). Turner approached Grindelwald from Lauterbrunnen by way of the gloomy mountain-hung valley of the Schwarz Lütschental. The village provided the closest access to glaciers anywhere in the Alps. Here, Turner confronts the lower glacier plunging through the forest and the wall of the Eiger rising behind it. He made a chalk elaboration of this sketch in his Grenoble series (Tate D04537; Turner Bequest LXXIV 44). However, David Hill has noted that Turner never developed a fully finished subject from his Grindelwald sketches, suggesting that he felt ‘slightly overwhelmed’ by the scenery.1

David Blayney Brown
March 2004

1
David Hill, Turner in the Alps: The Journey through France and Switzerland in 1802, London 1992, p.118.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The Lower Glacier, Grindelwald, with the Eiger 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2004, 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-the-lower-glacier-grindelwald-with-the-eiger-r1133471, accessed 18 April 2024.