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 Three Sketches; Two of Mont Blanc from Chamonix; Mont Blanc from below the Col de la Seigne 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Sketches; Two of Mont Blanc from Chamonix; Mont Blanc from below the Col de la Seigne’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Verso:
Three Sketches; Two of Mont Blanc from Chamonix; Mont Blanc from below the Col de la Seigne 1836
D29071
Turner Bequest CCXCIII 20a
Pencil on white wove paper, 190 x 113 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘...When the Morn very bad – Blanc the Crown’, ‘Boss’ [Bossons] and ‘Col de Four’ at top of page
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains three sketches, drawn with the sketchbook in the upright position, running down the page from the top:
i. Mont Blanc and the Glacier des Bossons from Chamonix. This sketch is annotated with several inscriptions, now indecipherable but presumably relating to weather conditions, and in this and the sketch immediately below, Turner appears to have been recording the same scene successively to note the changes in effect. He sketched the same material on another page of the sketchbook (D29081; Turner Bequest CCXCIII 25a) and in watercolour studies (Tate D35936, D35996; Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 93, 152).
ii. Mont Blanc and the Glacier des Bossons from Chamonix, inscribed ‘When the Morn very bad – Blanc the Crown’ and below ‘Boss[ons]’.
iii. Mont Blanc and the Aiguille Noire overlooking the Val Veni, from above the Pont de la Visaille, descending towards Courmayeur from the Col de la Seigne. Turner’s inscription here mistakenly records the ‘Col de Four’ (the Col des Fours, on the direct route from the Col du Bonhomme to the Col de la Seigne), presumably recalling his route over that pass. The view is similar to that recorded in a watercolour of the Col de la Seigne (private collection)1 but is actually taken from considerably further down the valley.

David Hill
June 2010

1
Christie’s sale, London 8 July 1997, lot 75, as ‘Scene in the Val d’Aosta’.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Three Sketches; Two of Mont Blanc from Chamonix; Mont Blanc from below 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-three-sketches-two-of-mont-blanc-from-chamonix-mont-blanc-r1144620, accessed 19 September 2024.