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

This page contains two sketches of the tunnel of Les Échelles, also known as the ‘Tunnel de la Grotte’, a passageway through the Chartreuse Mountains just east of the village of Les Échelles in Savoy. This impressive feat of nineteenth-century engineering had been undertaken on the orders of Napoleon who considered the existing ancient route of the Voie Sarde (Sardinian Way) too inconvenient and time-consuming for the movement of troops and artillery. According to contemporary guidebooks the resulting gallery excavated out of the limestone rock face was ‘twenty-five feet high’ and wide, and nearly ‘one thousand feet long’, ‘forming a carriage-way, along which two diligences fully loaded may pass abreast’.1 At the time of Turner’s visit, the tunnel, which was the first built in the French Alps, had only recently been constructed (1804–17) and in fact the official inauguration was not held until 1820. However, the passage was obviously in use during 1819: the lower study shows the entrance to the tunnel but the upper drawing depicts the dark and craggy interior. Turner scholar Eric Shanes has suggested that the sketches might relate to a later watercolour study of an unidentified mountain tunnel (Tate D25213; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 91).2

Napoleon was responsible for a number of similar road improvements and shortcuts across Europe and Turner seems to have been very interested in the various Alpine schemes, most notably taking a detour from the Italian Lakes in order to view the recently built Simplon Pass (see the Turin, Como, Lugarno, Maggiore sketchbook, Tate, Turner Bequest CLXXIV, and the Passage of the Simplon sketchbook, Tate, Turner Bequest CXCIV).