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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Passage of the Simplon Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Entrance to the Gondo Ravine, near the Simplon Pass 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Entrance to the Gondo Ravine, near the Simplon Pass’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Verso:
?Entrance to the Gondo Ravine, near the Simplon Pass 1819
D16913
Turner Bequest CXCIV 12 a
Pencil and grey watercolour wash on white wove paper, 121 x 195 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘wood’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The road between Domodossola in Italy, and Brig in Switzerland via the Simplon Pass was built by Napoleon during the early nineteenth century. At five different points along the route there are tunnels or galleries hewn through the rock to make the road passable through heavy snow. This sketch appears to depict the one of those tunnels, possibly the entrance to the ravine near Gondo, also known as the Galerie d’Algaby.1 The dark ground of the grey watercolour wash makes the rest of the composition difficult to discern.
For a general discussion of Turner’s expedition to the Simplon Pass see the introduction to the sketchbook.

Nicola Moorby
April 2011

1
A comparable view can be seen in a print by Gabriel Lory, Vue de la Galerie d’Algaby prise du côté du Vallais, from Voyage Pittoresque de Genè à Milan par le Simplon 1811, reproduced at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectid=3295988&partid=1&searchText=simplon&fromADBC=ad&toADBC=ad&numpages=10&images=on&orig=%2fresearch%2fsearch_the_collection_database.aspx&currentPage=2.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘?Entrance to the Gondo Ravine, near the Simplon Pass 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-entrance-to-the-gondo-ravine-near-the-simplon-pass-r1132788, accessed 05 January 2025.