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 Lightning over a Wooded Valley; ?St Laurent-du-Pont, Chartreuse 1802

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lightning over a Wooded Valley; ?St Laurent-du-Pont, Chartreuse’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lightning over a Wooded Valley; ?St Laurent-du-Pont, Chartreuse 1802
D40023
Turner Bequest LXXIV R
Pencil, black chalk and white gouache on greyish-buff laid paper, 212 x 283 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXIV R’
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Although stamped separately with the letter ‘G’, the present drawing is probably the one listed by Finberg as ‘Page 40’ of the Grenoble series, which has long been thought to be missing.
The title ‘St. Lauriot, Savoy’ given by John Ruskin when ‘Page 40’ was exhibited at the National Gallery was presumably based on one of two labels inscribed by Turner ‘St La...’., most probably indicating St Laurent-du-Pont, formerly St Laurent-du-Desert. Turner passed through the village on his way up from Voreppe though what he described as the ‘Petit’ Chartreuse’ to the Gorges du Guiers Mort.
Meeting Joseph Farington on 1 October 1802, in Paris after his Alpine tour, Turner reported seeing ‘very fine Thunder Storms among the mountains’.1
1
Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre eds., The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol.V, New Haven and London 1979, p.1890.
Verso:
Blank, inscribed perhaps by a later hand in pencil ‘46’

David Blayney Brown
September 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Lightning over a Wooded Valley; ?St Laurent-du-Pont, Chartreuse 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-lightning-over-a-wooded-valley-st-laurent-du-pont-chartreuse-r1146455, accessed 19 April 2024.