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 Two Sketches: Pont des Bergues, Geneva; ?Castle on an Eminence in a Mountain Valley 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Sketches: Pont des Bergues, Geneva; ?Castle on an Eminence in a Mountain Valley’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 32 Recto:
Two Sketches: Pont des Bergues, Geneva; ?Castle on an Eminence in a Mountain Valley 1836
D29094
Turner Bequest CCXCIII 32
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 190 mm
Inscribed, possibly by John Ruskin, in blue ink ‘32’ bottom left, inverted, and ‘320’ top left, inverted
Stamped in brown ‘CCXCIII 32’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains two sketches, both inverted in relation to the main numbered sequence of subjects in the sketchbook:
i. (main sketch) The left part of a double-page sketch continued to the right on D29093; Turner Bequest CCXCIII 31a, opposite, recording the view of Geneva from the Quai des Bergues. This sketch pans around from the Mole, with Mont Blanc visible immediately to its right, across the harbour front with Mont Salève behind, to the cathedral at the left edge of the sheet, and continues opposite to record the Île Rousseau (with Rousseau's statue just visible) and the exit of the Rhône, with the bridge of boats across it and the Hotel des Bergues at the extreme right.
ii. (below left) A thumbnail sketch perhaps of a castle on an eminence in a high-sided valley.
For notes on the Rhône at Geneva see D29140; Turner Bequest CCXCIII 55 in this sketchbook.

David Hill
June 2010

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Two Sketches: Pont des Bergues, Geneva; ?Castle on an Eminence in a Mountain Valley 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-two-sketches-pont-des-bergues-geneva-castle-on-an-eminence-r1144641, accessed 25 April 2024.