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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches: A Distant View of Stratford-upon-Avon; Pré St Didier in the Val d'Aosta 1833 and 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 84 Recto:
Two Sketches: A Distant View of Stratford-upon-Avon; Pré St Didier in the Val d’Aosta 1833 and 1836
D29196
Turner Bequest CCXCIII 84
Pencil on white wove paper, 190 x 113 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘St Did’ bottom right
Inscribed, possibly by John Ruskin, in blue ink ‘84’ bottom left, inverted, and ‘320’ top left, inverted
Stamped in brown ‘CCXCIII 84’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains two sketches:
i. (main sketch, drawn inverted in relation to the main numbered sequence of subjects in the sketchbook) Stratford-upon-Avon, with a distant view of Holy Trinity Church and the river and bridges. See Introduction to the sketchbook for the presence of a small run of sketches at Stratford dating from 1833 as well as the majority of subjects from 1836, including the following.
ii (inverted in relation to the main sketch) Pré St Didier in the Val d’Aosta, looking down the valley, from a slightly lower viewpoint than in a watercolour of the same area (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).1

David Hill
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.479 no.1493 as ‘Faido’ and accordingly dated ‘1843’, though Wilton notes ‘stylistically similar to drawings of 1836’.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Two Sketches: A Distant View of Stratford-upon-Avon; Pré St Didier in the Val d’Aosta 1833 and 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-a-distant-view-of-stratford-upon-avon-pre-st-r1144744, accessed 28 March 2024.