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 Near Grenoble: Mont Rachais and Mont St Eynard from the River Drac 1802

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Near Grenoble: Mont Rachais and Mont St Eynard from the River Drac’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Near Grenoble: Mont Rachais and Mont St Eynard from the River Drac 1802
D04542
Turner Bequest LXXIV 49
Pencil, black chalk and white gouache on greyish-buff laid paper, 215 x 285 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXIV O’ 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.
Finberg listed this as one of a further five drawings associated with this sketchbook which ‘had also been mounted, but have not been exhibited. Their titles, if they had any, have been cut off.’
The identification of the outskirts of Grenoble, first proposed in the 1981 Paris exhibition, has been retained since, the most detailed description being kindly communicated by Roland Courtot of the University of Aix-en-Provence, to correct errors made by the present writer at the time of the 1998 Tate/Martigny exhibition.1 M. Courtot observes that the view is towards Grenoble from the south-west, on the right bank of the River Drac; the mountains are Mont Rachais on the left and Mont St Eynard on the right, and between them the western rampart of the Bastille zig-zags up the slope from the Porte de France beside the River Isère. The Grésivaudan or Valley of Grenoble stretches away to the right. For a closer view of Grenoble from a similar angle see, from this sketchbook, D04508; Turner Bequest LXXV 15 (stamped ‘Y’).
Meanwhile, Butlin and Joll had cited the present drawing in support of the identification by M. Léon Reymond2 of a small painting (Tate N02988)3 as depicting Grenoble from the Drac, with Mont St Eynard and Mont Blanc. The oil was probably painted c.1803.
1
Email dated 10 February 2012; copy in Tate catalogue files.
2
Letter, 16 November 1981 in Tate catalogue files.
3
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.110 no.145a (pl.151).
Verso:
Blank

David Blayney Brown
September 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Near Grenoble: Mont Rachais and Mont St Eynard from the River Drac 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2011, 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-near-grenoble-mont-rachais-and-mont-st-eynard-from-the-river-r1146407, accessed 26 April 2024.