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 > Val d'Aosta Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Four Sketches: Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon; Two Sketches Going up to the Col du Bonhomme; Boats on ?Lake Geneva 1833 and 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Four Sketches: Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon; Two Sketches Going up to the Col du Bonhomme; Boats on ?Lake Geneva’ 1833 and 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 91 Recto:
Four Sketches: Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon; Two Sketches Going up to the Col du Bonhomme; Boats on ?Lake Geneva 1833 and 1836
D29210
Turner Bequest CCXCIII 91
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 190 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘The Immortal | SHAKSPEARE | was born in this House’ and ‘Swan and | Maidenhead’
Inscribed, possibly by John Ruskin, in blue ink ‘91’ bottom left, inverted, and ‘320’ top left, inverted
Stamped in brown ‘CCXCIII 91’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains four sketches:
i. (main sketch) Stratford-upon-Avon, with Shakespeare’s birthplace. The inn, the Swan and Maidenhead, the sign of which Turner indicates, stands next door.1 See Introduction to the sketchbook for the presence of a small run of sketches at Stratford dating from 1833, as well as the majority of subjects from 1836 including the following.
ii. (right, drawn with the page upright)) A waterfall among mountains, going up to the Col du Bonhomme above the Chalets de la Balme
iii. (top right, drawn with the page upright, squeezed into the blank corner of (ii.) An Alpine pass, with a path zig-zagging between high mountains, going up to the Col du Bonhomme above the Chalets de la Balme, a waterfall centre left, and the Bonhomme centre right, above.
iv. (inverted in relation to the main sketch) Two boats, possibly on Lake Geneva

David Hill
June 2010

Revised by David Blayney Brown
March 2013

1
Thanks are due to Dr Bernard Richards of Brasenose College, Oxford, for reading this part of Turner’s inscription.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Four Sketches: Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon; Two Sketches Going up to the Col du Bonhomme; Boats on ?Lake Geneva 1833 and 1836 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2010, revised by David Blayney Brown, March 2013, 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-four-sketches-shakespeares-birthplace-stratford-upon-avon-r1144758, accessed 03 February 2025.