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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Switzerland 1802 > Grenoble Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Fourvoirie, Gorges du Guiers Mort, Chartreuse 1802

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Fourvoirie, Gorges du Guiers Mort, Chartreuse’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
?Fourvoirie, Gorges du Guiers Mort, Chartreuse 1802
D04516
Turner Bequest LXXIV 23
Pencil, black chalk and white gouache on greyish-buff laid paper, 207 x 281 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Chartruse’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LXXIV 23’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
For Turner’s visit to the Chartreuse in 1802 see Introduction to the sketchbook.
Turner’s label for this drawing is inscribed ‘Le Cascade de Chartruse Moulins de Eau’ [sic]. Rather than the traditional location of this mill and bridge at Voreppe, the present writer prefers David Hill’s suggestion of Fourvoirie, the site of an old mill that was destroyed by an avalanche in 1935. On his label, Turner noted the initials ‘F’ and ‘SWP’, indicating possible commissions of a finished version of the subject for Walter Fawkes or his relation by marriage, Sir William Pilkington. This subject may be the ‘Mill near the Convent’ (that is, of the Grande Chartreuse) listed twice by Turner, near Pilkington’s name, in the front of the album he compiled of his best 1802 drawings (see Introduction and Technical notes to this sketchbook). No finished watercolour of the subject is known, however.
Verso:
Blank, inscribed perhaps by a later hand in pencil ‘10’ with a circle

David Blayney Brown
September 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘?Fourvoirie, Gorges du Guiers Mort, Chartreuse 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-fourvoirie-gorges-du-guiers-mort-chartreuse-r1146384, accessed 04 November 2025.