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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Return from Italy Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches of a Road within Mountains; and One of a Church above a Lake, ?near Avigliana 1820

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Sketches of a Road within Mountains; and One of a Church above a Lake, ?near Avigliana’ 1820
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 3 Verso:
Two Sketches of a Road within Mountains; and One of a Church above a Lake, ?near Avigliana 1820
D16646
Turner Bequest CXCII 3 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 128 x 98 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Like Wilson | Ld Eg’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains three sketches. The upper two vistas depict a road winding through mountainous landscape with a couple of buildings visible in each scene. Although the precise locations have not been identified, they are likely to represent views on the Piedmont side of the approach towards the Mont Cenis pass.
The bottom study appears to show a church with a bell-tower situated at the top of a steep slope above a lake, possibly one of the two crater lakes of Avigliana in the Susa Valley (see Tate D14164; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 10). Turner’s inscription ‘Like Wilson | Ld Eg’ indicates that the prospect reminded him of a painting by the eighteenth-century Welsh artist, Richard Wilson (1713–82) which he had seen at Petworth House in the collection of his friend and patron, Lord Egremont. The picture he had in mind must have been View on the Arno, date unknown (National Trust, Petworth House),1 which has a similar composition of a lake on the left and a tower on a hill on the right.2

Nicola Moorby
April 2013

1
W.G. Constable, Richard Wilson, London 1953, pl.100a.
2
Information supplied by Andrew Loukes, House and Collections Manager, Petworth House. Email correspondence with the author, April 2013.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Two Sketches of a Road within Mountains; and One of a Church above a Lake, ?near Avigliana 1820 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-two-sketches-of-a-road-within-mountains-and-one-of-a-church-r1142545, accessed 18 May 2024.