Joseph Mallord William Turner Chamonix: Mont Blanc and the Arve Valley from the Path to the Montenvers 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
Chamonix: Mont Blanc and the Arve Valley from the Path to the Montenvers
1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Chamonix: Mont Blanc and the Arve Valley from the Path to the Montenvers 1802
D04610
Turner Bequest LXXV 18
Turner Bequest LXXV 18
Pencil, black chalk, watercolour and gouache with scratching out on white wove paper prepared with grey wash, 318 x 472 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXV 18’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LXXV 18’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1937
Display of Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, London, December 1937–September 1939; Tate Gallery, London, continuing after the Second World War, 1945–December 1952 (no catalogue; frame 1:18).
1955
L’Aquarelle anglaise 1750–1850, British Council tour, Musée Rath, Geneva, October 1955–January 1956, Cabinet des Estampes de l’Ecole Polytehnique Fédérale, Zurich, January–March 1956 (114).
1963
Turner Watercolors from The British Museum: A Loan Exhibition Circulated by the Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, September–October 1963, Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, Texas, November 1963, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, December 1963–January 1964, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, January–March 1964, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, March–April 1964, Brooklyn Museum, New York, May, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, June–July 1964 (6).
1970
Turner: Watercolours Lent by the British Museum, Musée Provisoire d’Art Moderne, Brussels, November 1970–January 1971 (2).
1972
La Peinture romantique anglaise et les Préraphaélites, Petit Palais, Paris, January–April 1972 (283).
1978
Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Lent by the British Museum, Tate Gallery, London, January–June 1978 (no catalogue, as ‘Mont Blanc’).
1979
Turner’s First Visit to the Continent: Watercolours from the Turner Bequest Loaned by the British Museum, Tate Gallery, London, July–December 1979 (no catalogue, as ‘Mont Blanc, from Chamonny’).
1980
Turner in Yorkshire, York City Art Gallery, June–July 1980 (92, as ‘The Valley of Chamonix’).
1981
Turner en France: aquarelles, peintures, dessins, gravures, carnets de croquis / Turner in France: Watercolours, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, Sketchbooks, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris, October 1981–January 1982 (22).
1982
J.M.W. Turner Watercolors from the British Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, March–May 1982, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, May–July 1982 (11).
1989
Turner: The Second Decade: Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest 1800–1810, Tate Gallery, London, January–March 1989 (10).
1998
Turner in the Alps 1802, Tate Gallery, London, November 1998–February 1999, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, March–June 1999 (30).
2007
Colour and Line: Turner’s Experiments [second hang], Tate Britain, London, November 2007–October 2008 (no catalogue).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.202, LXXV 18, as ‘Mont Blanc, from Chamouny’.
1963
Edward Croft-Murray, Turner Watercolors from The British Museum: A Loan Exhibition Circulated by the Smithsonian Institution, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC 1963, p.9.
1966
Francis W. Hawcroft, Exhibition of Watercolours by J.M.W. Turner, exhibition catalogue, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 1966, pp.20–1.
1970
Luke Herrmann, Turner: Watercolours Lent by the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, Musée Provisoire d’Art Moderne, Brussels 1970, pp.6, 34 reproduced.
1970
N.[Nicholas]A. Serota, ‘J.M.W. Turner’s Alpine Tours’, unpublished M.A. Report, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1970, p.14.
1972
Kenneth Clark, Michael Kitson, John Gage and others, La Peinture romantique anglaise et les Préraphaélites, exhibition catalogue, Petit Palais, Paris 1972, p.193 reproduced.
1975
Andrew Wilton, Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London 1975, p.47.
1976
John Russell and Andrew Wilton, Turner in Switzerland, Zurich 1976, pp.43 reproduced, as ‘Chamonix: Mont Blanc’, 136.
1979
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.343.
1980
David Hill, Stanley Warburton, Mary Tussey and others, Turner in Yorkshire, exhibition catalogue, York City Art Gallery 1980, p.60 reproduced, as ‘The Valley of Chamonix’.
1981
Lindsay Stainton in Maurice Guillaud and others, Turner en France: aquarelles, peintures, dessins, gravures, carnets de croquis / Turner in France: Watercolours, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, Sketchbooks, exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris 1981, pp.76 reproduced fig.134, 77.
1982
Lindsay Stainton and Richard S. Schneiderman, J.M.W. Turner Watercolors from the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens 1982, pp.xii, xiii, 11–12 reproduced in colour.
1984
Craig Hartley, Turner Watercolours in the Whitworth Art gallery, exhibition catalogue, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 1984, p.37.
1987
Jonathan Wordsworth, Michael C. Jaye, Robert Woof and others, William Wordsworth and the Age of English Romanticism, exhibition catalogue, New York Public Library 1987, p.235.
1989
Robert Upstone, Turner: The Second Decade: Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest 1800–1810, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1989, p.22 reproduced.
1993
Susan Phelps Gordon, Anthony Lacy Gully, Robert Hewison and others, John Ruskin and the Victorian Eye, exhibition catalogue, Phoenix Art Museum 1993, p.173.
1998
David Blayney Brown, Turner in the Alps 1802, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1998, pp.100–1 reproduced in colour.
1999
David Blayney Brown, Turner et les Alpes 1802, exhibition catalogue, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny 1999, pp.100–1 reproduced in colour.
2000
David Hill, Joseph Mallord William Turner: Le Mont-Blanc et la Vallée d’Aoste, exhibition catalogue, Museo Archeologico Regionale, Aosta / Musée Archéologique Régional, Aoste 2000, pp.38, 274.
Technique and condition
In this painting on grey-washed wove paper, indigo has been used in the sky, foreground and middle ground, sometimes mixed with other pigments. All these areas have faded or changed tone: Finberg noted the loss of colour in the earlier twentieth century. A tiny strip of surviving blue on the top edge, left of centre, shows the extent of the change. The warm brown earth pigments mixed with indigo for the originally greener foreground landscape now create a rather uniform impression of warmth, and match the colour of the pine trees more than Turner intended. Where the trees were darkest against the hillside, some of their dark green-black colour remains, but where they were painted paler against the sky, only brown is left behind, giving the upper branches a bleak and dying appearance. The white gouache used for the snow-capped mountains also looks less dramatic against pale, now-uniform grey sky that might have been modulated with clouds painted in different strengths of blue indigo wash.
Helen Evans
October 2008
Revised by Joyce Townsend
February 2011
How to cite
Helen Evans, 'Technique and Condition', October 2008, revised by Joyce Townsend, February 2011, in David Blayney Brown, ‘Chamonix: Mont Blanc and the Arve Valley from the Path to the Montenvers 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2014, https://wwwJohn Russell and Andrew Wilton consider this composition, though faded by exposure, ‘one of the grandest’ from this sketchbook with a pronounced diagonal stress that ‘seems to have embodied for [Turner] the dynamic essence of Alpine landscape’.1 In this respect it is similar to the drawing taken from closer to the trees by the track up the Montenvers, also from the sketchbook (D04607; Turner Bequest LXXV 15). Russell and Wilton identify the distant mountains here as the Dôme du Goûter and Aiguille du Goûter, and the Glacier des Bossons on the right. More recently Eric Shanes has described this as a view south-westwards down the valley of the River Arve, across a wide swathe of the Montenvers, with Mont Blanc high on the left. He identifies the watercolour made from it for Walter Fawkes and signed and dated 1809 (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester)2 as the Montanvert, Valley of Chamouni shown in Fawkes’s exhibition of his collection at 45 Grosvenor Place in 1819.3
Verso:
Blank, inscribed perhaps by a later hand in pencil ‘4’ within a circle
David Blayney Brown
October 2011
How to cite
David Blayney Brown, ‘Chamonix: Mont Blanc and the Arve Valley from the Path to the Montenvers 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2014, https://www