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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Studies from 1802 Continental Tour ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Lake of Geneva, from above Clarens c.1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Lake of Geneva, from above Clarens’ c.1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Lake of Geneva, from above Clarens c.1810
D08218
Turner Bequest CXX E
Pencil and ink on white wove paper, 233 x 343 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘283’ bottom right
Inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘CXX E’ towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXX E’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Butlin and Joll recognised, and is indicated in a modern note in pencil on the mount, this drawing is identical in composition to the picture Lake of Geneva, from Montreux, Chillion, &c exhibited at Turner’s Gallery in 1810 and bought by Walter Fawkes (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California).1 The view is from above Clarens, looking across the water towards Chillon. The figures, including a group of dancers, are exactly the same in the picture and overall the correspondence is so close that Butlin and Joll suggest that the drawing is a replica, perhaps made in connection with the Liber Studiorum. It is made in ink over faint pencil, within a rough pencil outline squared in ink at the corners. With some reservations, the drawing should probably still be credited to Turner as it does not fall into any group of works by other artists preserved in the Bequest.
1
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.74 no.103 (pl.110).
Verso:
Laid down

David Blayney Brown
February 2012

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The Lake of Geneva, from above Clarens c.1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-lake-of-geneva-from-above-clarens-r1147463, accessed 25 April 2024.