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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Switzerland 1802 > Grenoble Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Grenoble from the River Isère, with the Porte de France 1802

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Grenoble from the River Isère, with the Porte de France’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Grenoble from the River Isère, with the Porte de France 1802
D04507
Turner Bequest LXXIV 14a
Pencil, black chalk and white gouache on greyish-buff laid paper, 215 x 282 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXIV X’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
For Turner’s visit to Grenoble in 1802 see Introduction to the sketchbook and notes to D04495; Turner Bequest LXXIV 3.
Turner’s label for this drawing is inscribed ‘Ville de Grenoble Pont pour les Carousses Port de France Citadel &c’ [sic]. From the River Isère the artist looks east towards the city; in the left foreground is the Porte de France (built in 1620) and behind it the ramparts running up to the Bastille. The bridge on the right corresponds to the position of the present-day Pont Goutard. The cluster of buildings to its left includes the convent of the Visitation-de-Sainte-Marie d’en-Haut (today the Musée Dauphinoise). The river is bustling with activity and the shadows cast by boats and figures on the water and highlights of white on buildings indicate a bright, sunny day. The Belledonne massif is in the distance. For comments on this subject, the author is grateful to Roland Courtot of the University of Aix-en-Provence.1 For views of the city and river from this sketchbook, with a different, wooden bridge, see the recto, D04506; Turner Bequest 14, and D04508; Turner Bequest LXXIV 15.
In his catalogue notes for Marlborough House, John Ruskin thought this drawing ‘less valuable than most of the series [of Sketches in Savoy and Piedmont], but interesting in the way in which [Turner] climbs from the near building on the right to the fort above, along the winding wall’.2
1
Email dated 14 March 2012; copy in Tate catalogue files.
2
Cook and Wedderburn 1904, p.266; Ruskin on Pictures; Cook 1902, p.227.
Verso:
Blank, inscribed by a later hand in pencil ‘no14a Grenoble’

David Blayney Brown
March 2012

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Grenoble from the River Isère, with the Porte de France 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-grenoble-from-the-river-isere-with-the-porte-de-france-r1146377, accessed 16 April 2024.