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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Three Sketches in Savoy; Including One of a Waterfall near ?Chambéry 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 75 Recto:
Three Sketches in Savoy; Including One of a Waterfall near ?Chambéry 1819
D14116
Turner Bequest CLXXIII 75
Pencil on white wove paper, 185 x 114 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘M[?...] vines’ and ‘Girl lying in the [?Hay]’ bottom of centre sketch
Stamped in black ‘CLXXIII 75’ top right, ascending right-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains three distinct landscape sketches. The locations are not conclusively identified although they are part of a sequence of views relating to Turner’s travels through Savoy towards the Mont Cenis pass. The middle vista includes a ruined tower near the centre of the composition. The bottom scene meanwhile appears to depict a waterfall falling from a steep drop on the right-hand side. This is tentatively identified as the Cascade de Coux (or sometimes Couz) which is situated near the road between St Thibaud-de-Couz and Chambéry. The feature was mentioned in contemporary guidebooks as worthy of note and was described as ‘a stream of limpid water, which falls perpendicularly from the height of a hundred and twenty feet.’1
1
Mariana Starke, Travels on the Continent between the Years 1824 and 1828 Written for the Use and Particular Information of Travellers, London 1828, p.526.
Verso:
Blank

Nicola Moorby
March 2013

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Three Sketches in Savoy; Including One of a Waterfall near ?Chambéry 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-three-sketches-in-savoy-including-one-of-a-waterfall-near-r1142975, accessed 19 September 2024.