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 Panoramas of the Head of Lake Geneva Towards Montreux and Villeneuve, and a Detail of the Castle of Chillon 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Panoramas of the Head of Lake Geneva Towards Montreux and Villeneuve, and a Detail of the Castle of Chillon’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 40 Verso:
Panoramas of the Head of Lake Geneva Towards Montreux and Villeneuve, and a Detail of the Castle of Chillon 1836
D29111
Turner Bequest CCXCIII 40a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 190 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘To Cham [?]’, ‘Montreux’, and with illegible notes over the peaks in the bottom sketch
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains four sketches:
i. (main sketch) The left part of a two-part panorama of the head of Lake Geneva taken from the water from off Villeneuve or from the end of the pier, continued to the right on D29112; Turner Bequest CCXCIII 41, opposite. Turner drew the same material, but taking a less panoramic approach, during his first visit to the Alps in 1802 (Tate D04570; Turner Bequest LXXIV 77). He also painted a watercolour, The Castle of Chillon (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester),1 and it is possible that this was painted from the motif on the same 1836 visit as this sketch.
ii (below, inverted in relation to the main sketch) The north shore of the head of Lake Geneva from St Gingolph, panning from Vevey and continuing right in (iii).
iii. (top left) Villeneuve with the rising sun behind, as seen from St Gingolph, continuing right the panorama begun in (ii).
iv. (above right) Detail of Chillon.

David Hill
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.474 no.1456.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Panoramas of the Head of Lake Geneva Towards Montreux and Villeneuve, and a Detail of the Castle of Chillon 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-panoramas-of-the-head-of-lake-geneva-towards-montreux-and-r1144657, accessed 26 April 2024.