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: From Lake Geneva Looking to the Mountains Above St Gingolph; Lac Combal Looking up the Val Veni towards the Col del la Seigne; Gorge at St Didier in the Val d'Aosta 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Sketches: From Lake Geneva Looking to the Mountains Above St Gingolph; Lac Combal Looking up the Val Veni towards the Col del la Seigne; Gorge at St Didier in the Val d'Aosta’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Recto:
Three Sketches: From Lake Geneva Looking to the Mountains Above St Gingolph; Lac Combal Looking up the Val Veni towards the Col del la Seigne; Gorge at St Didier in the Val d’Aosta 1836
D29096
Turner Bequest CCXCIII 33
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 190 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘St Gingolph’ to left and ‘L Combal’ below, inverted
Inscribed, possibly by John Ruskin, in blue ink ‘33’ bottom left, inverted, and ‘320’, top left, inverted
Stamped in brown ‘CCXCIII 33’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains three sketches:
i. (main sketch, inverted in relation to the main numbered series of subjects in the sketchbook) The left part of a double-page sketch continued to the right on D29094; Turner Bequest CCXCIII 32a, opposite, recording the view from Lake Geneva towards the mountains on the south shore above St Gingolph.
ii. (below left) A hasty thumbnail sketch of the gorge at ‘S Didier’ in the Val d’Aosta. A watercolour called A Mountain Gorge (Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, R.I.)1 possibly depicts the same subject.
iii. (lower centre, inverted in relation to the main sketch) Looking up the Val Veni from the bridge at the mouth of ‘L[ac] Combal’, towards the Col de la Seigne. Huts at the site of the present Refuge Elizabetta are visible in the middle distance.

David Hill
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.474 no.1453.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Three Sketches: From Lake Geneva Looking to the Mountains Above St Gingolph; Lac Combal Looking up the Val Veni towards the Col del la Seigne; Gorge at St Didier in the Val d’Aosta 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-from-lake-geneva-looking-to-the-mountains-r1144643, accessed 20 April 2024.