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 Three Sketches: The Head of Lake Geneva from above Vevey; Two sketches of Fort Roch in the Val d'Aosta 1836

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Sketches: The Head of Lake Geneva from above Vevey; Two sketches of Fort Roch in the Val d'Aosta’ 1836
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Verso:
Three Sketches: The Head of Lake Geneva from above Vevey; Two sketches of Fort Roch in the Val d’Aosta 1836
D29065
Turner Bequest CCXCIII 17a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 190 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘V Green Lake’ to right and ‘Pierre Tale’ [sic] centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains three sketches, the main sketch (i) and that at bottom right (iii) inverted in relation to the main sequence of sketches in the sketchbook:
i. (main sketch, at top of the page) The head of Lake Geneva from above Vevey, inscribed ‘V Green Lake’ to the right. Almost exactly the same panorama appears in a watercolour painted about 1809 (private collection).1 Turner sketched a similar view but from a viewpoint further left on a later page in this sketchbook (D29119; Turner Bequest CCXCIII 44a).
ii. (bottom left, inverted in relation to the main sketch) A quick thumbnail sketch of Fort Roch, Val d’Aosta, looking towards Mont Blanc. In this sketch Turner was revisiting the viewpoint of a sketch made on his first visit to the valley in 1802 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)2, and of later finished watercolours, Fort Roch, Val d’Aosta (with Lowell Libson, London, 2013)3 and The Battle of Fort Rock, Val d’Aouste, Piedmont, 1796 (Tate D04900).4 The sketch is inscribed ‘Piere Tale’, left, indicating Pierre Taillée, the local name for Fort Roch. Turner sketched a more considered version of this composition on a later page of the sketchbook (D41202; Turner Bequest 92a).
iii. (bottom right), Fort Roch with Mont Blanc in the distance; a closer view than (ii).

David Hill
June 2010

Revised by David Blayney Brown
March 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, London 1979, p.344 no.392.
2
Ibid., p.341 no.360.
3
Ibid., p.341, no.369.
4
Ibid., p.345 no.399.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Three Sketches: The Head of Lake Geneva from above Vevey; Two sketches of Fort Roch in the Val d’Aosta 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-three-sketches-the-head-of-lake-geneva-from-above-vevey-two-r1144614, accessed 26 January 2025.