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 > Fort Bard Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Mountain Valley, ?the Susa Valley from the Mont Cenis Road 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Mountain Valley, ?the Susa Valley from the Mont Cenis Road’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Verso:
A Mountain Valley, ?the Susa Valley from the Mont Cenis Road 1836
D29264
Turner Bequest CCXCIV 28 (but see main catalogue entry)
Pencil on white wove paper, 104 x 148 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘... of ...’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The two key words of Turner’s inscription identifying the mountain valley in this very quick sketch are illegible; however the composition is similar to the sketch near the beginning of the sketchbook as presently numbered (D29218; Turner Bequest CCXCIV 3a) and possibly (as there) the view west along the Susa valley from the Mont Cenis road, but from a still higher viewpoint. Turner recorded a very similar vista in a watercolour called A View along an Alpine Valley, probably the Val d’Aosta (private collection).1
This page was numbered as the recto by Finberg, although the opposite side (otherwise blank) was numbered in blue ink, possibly by John Ruskin, as the recto, and stamped with the Turner Bequest number accordingly. It has since been rebound, in its correct orientation, as folio 29 verso.
The other (recto) side is also inscribed with the Turner Bequest schedule number ‘357’ bottom right.

David Hill
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.472 no.1432 as ‘View down the Val d'Aosta’.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘A Mountain Valley, ?the Susa Valley from the Mont Cenis Road 1836 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-mountain-valley-the-susa-valley-from-the-mont-cenis-road-r1144816, accessed 08 February 2025.