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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales 1798 > Dynevor Castle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Composition Study: An Army Climbing to the Crest of a Mountain 1798

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Composition Study: An Army Climbing to the Crest of a Mountain’ 1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 69 Recto:
Composition Study: An Army Climbing to the Crest of a Mountain 1798
D01576
Turner Bequest XL 67
Pencil on white wove paper, 135 x 95 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘67’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘XL – 67’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is probably, as Finberg suggested,1 a study for an unexecuted picture of Hannibal crossing the Alps. The idea is perhaps derived from the lost 1776 oil painting of the subject by John Robert Cozens (1752–1797), or of an alternative composition which survives in a circular drawing;2 the British Museum curator Kim Sloan considers it a ‘free interpretation’ of Cozens’s subject,3 which was exhibited as A Landscape, with Hannibal in his March over the Alps, showing to his Troops the Fertile Plains of Italy at the Royal Academy. The studies of warriors on folios 6 verso–7 recto and 13 recto (D01472–D01473, D01484; Turner Bequest XL 6a–7, 13) may relate to the design.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.96.
2
See Sloan 1986, pl.120.
3
Ibid., p.[110].

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Composition Study: An Army Climbing to the Crest of a Mountain 1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-composition-study-an-army-climbing-to-the-crest-of-a-r1173815, accessed 24 April 2024.