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 Chamonix 1836

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Chamonix’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Chamonix 1836
D34283
Turner Bequest CCCXLII 80
Chalk and pencil on paper, 238 x 310 mm
Inscribed in pencil ?by John Ruskin ‘Prieure Chamounix. [?]JR.’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLII–80’ bottom right
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sheet relates to Turner’s 1836 tour of the Alps (for more information, see the Introduction to this section), when Turner spent time in Chamonix, a French town near both the Italian and Swiss borders.
The Turner Bequest’s first cataloguer, A.J. Finberg, recognised the subject as Chamonix, which the Turner scholar David Hill, who later studied the 1836 Alpine tour in depth, concurred with.1 This French town, seen in the foreground of the drawing, sits at the foot of Mont Blanc in the Alps. Turner’s sketch encompasses some of the higher peaks of the Grandes Aiguilles to the north of the valley; his viewpoint seems to have been from somewhere to the south of the town, just above the valley floor.
For information about other studies of Chamonix made during the 1836 tour, see the entry for D34289 (Turner Bequest CCCXLII 84).
1
Finberg 1909, vol.II, p.1104; Hill 2000, p.275.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed in pencil ‘AB24 PO’ bottom right.

Elizabeth Jacklin
August 2019

How to cite

Elizabeth Jacklin, ‘Chamonix 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-chamonix-r1204592, accessed 18 May 2024.