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

This page contains three sketches:

i. (bottom right) At the Col du Bonhomme, looking north down the valley, with the summit cross at the left (now replaced by a shelter), inscribed ‘Top of Bonhomme’.
ii. (centre) The Tarantais massif, perhaps from the Col du Bonhomme, looking west.
iii. (left, with the book held in the upright position) Looking west from above Entreves on the path to the Val Ferret (visible in the left foreground), looking to the entrance to the Val Veni with Le Chetif at top left and the Brenva Glacier to the right; inscribed ‘Entreve’ and ‘G’ for the glacier. Turner sketched the same material in a watercolour study, Brenva Glacier and Mont Blanc from above Entreves Near Courmayeur, Val d’Aosta (Williamson Art Gallery Birkenhead)1 and from a slightly lower viewpoint on a following page of the sketchbook (D29075; Turner Bequest CCXCIII 22a). Turner was here returning to a subject that he had first sketched in 1802 (Tate D04469–D04470; Turner Bequest LXXIII 67a–68) and painted in a finished watercolour, Mont Blanc from above Courmayeur (Courtauld Gallery, London),2 although in the present sketch Turner has taken a much wider field of view and compressed it into a narrow compass.