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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Tour to the Alps 1836 > Separate Sheets Associated with the 1836 ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner In the Val d'Aosta, Looking up to Courmayeur and the Dent del Gigante 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘In the Val d'Aosta, Looking up to Courmayeur and the Dent del Gigante’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
In the Val d’Aosta, Looking up to Courmayeur and the Dent del Gigante 1836
D34188
Turner Bequest CCCXLII 4
Pencil and chalk on cream wove board, 205 x 310 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLII 4’ bottom right
Blind stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Blind stamped with an oval maker’s stamp ‘EXTRA SUPERFINE | [Coat of Arms] | LONDON BOARDS’ bottom left
Watermark ‘CRESWICK’
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This study relates to Turner’s 1836 tour of the Alps, which he made in the company of the wealthy Scottish landowner H.A.J. Munro of Novar; for more information about the tour, see the Introduction to this section.
As the Turner scholar David Hill has noted, when Turner sketched this view from the Val d’Aosta, looking towards Courmayeur and the Dent del Gigante, he was returning to a scene he had first seen in 1802, during the Alpine tour he took during the brief Peace of Amiens.1 This first visit resulted in a finished watercolour, St Huges denouncing vengeance on the Shepherd of Courmayer in the valley of d’Aoust (John Soane Museum, London2), which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803.
The present sketch presents a less obviously dramatic treatment of the Alpine scenery, with the foreground figure glimpsed on the right implying the landscape is this time rooted in the present Turner witnessed rather than forming the setting for a historical subject. Turner nonetheless captured the grandeur of the high peaks that form the backdrop.
1
Hill 2000, p.279.
2
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, London 1979, p.341 no.364.
Technical notes:
The paper historian Peter Bower has noted that this drawing is made on cream wove two-ply laminated and highly glazed board prepared with a buff wash rather than paper.1 He identified the ‘CRESWICK’ watermark and determined the paper was made by Thomas Creswick at Mill Green Mill, Hatfield, Hertfordshire and made up into board at his Islington Mill.2 David Hill has surmised that Turner may have borrowed materials from Munro, his travelling companion.3
1
Bower 1999, p.119.
2
Ibid, p.119.
3
Hill 2000, p.279.
Verso:
Blank

Elizabeth Jacklin
August 2019

How to cite

Elizabeth Jacklin, ‘In the Val d’Aosta, Looking up to Courmayeur and the Dent del Gigante 1836 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-in-the-val-daosta-looking-up-to-courmayeur-and-the-dent-del-r1204584, accessed 18 May 2024.