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

This watercolour was the model for the first illustration in Samuel Rogers’s de luxe edition of Italy, published in 1830. Engraved by Edward Goodall, it appears as the head-piece to Rogers’s first section, also entitled ‘The Lake of Geneva’.1 Goodall was one of the most prolific and skilled interpreters of Turner’s designs. He produced plates for nearly all of Turner’s print commissions, engraving eleven out of the twenty-five designs that Turner painted for Italy.

The Lake of Geneva (also known as Lake Leman) was a major landmark for British travellers as they made their way southward to Italy. Rogers describes the lake in his poem as ‘the mirror of all beauty’ with ‘A thousand shadows of a thousand hues | Chequering the clear expanse’.2 This description is brought to life in Turner’s illustration, which shows the blue hills and snow-capped peaks of the surrounding landscape reflected in the water’s shimmering surface. The central subject of Turner’s vignette derives from Rogers’s description of a passage-boat filled with peasant girls:

Turner adds an element of romance to the scene by including several young soldiers in the group occupying the boat. Boating parties were among Turner’s favourite subjects and they appear in a number of his landscape watercolours from this period, including Nottingham (Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery),3 Saltash from the Picturesque Views of England and Wales (British Museum),4 as well as Jumièges (Tate D24696; Turner Bequest CCLIX 131) from the French Rivers series. In addition to making extensive sketches of his natural surroundings while travelling, Turner also recorded local costumes for later use in his finished landscape compositions. The colourful uniforms and dresses in Lake of Geneva may refer to figure sketches from Turner’s 1802 trip to Switzerland (see Tate D04799–800, D04809–10, D04814, D04816; Turner Bequest LXXVIII 2–3, 12–3, 17–8).

Two unfinished watercolours may have served as preliminary studies for this vignette (see Tate D27526 and D27623; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 9 and CCLXXX 106). Both works present a castle or village seen from across a lake and surrounded by looming mountains. However, the distinctly human focus and the unimposing landscape of Lake of Geneva stand in clear contrast to these potential studies. In this vignette, rather than overpowering the figures in the foreground, the surrounding mountain peaks recede into the distance or are lost in feathery clouds. The landscape shown here actually bears greater resemblance to Turner’s on-the-spot sketches of the lake (see Tate D04570; Turner Bequest LXXIII 5 and Tate D04574; Turner Bequest LXXIII 35), and to his large-scale finished watercolour Lake of Geneva with Mont Blanc (Yale Center for British Art), completed in 1806.5 Like these earlier representations of the Lake of Geneva, Turner’s introductory vignette for Rogers’s Italy presents a picturesque and idyllic impression of the Swiss scene.

Cecilia Powell has noted that faint pencil lines drawn around the vignettes were made by the engravers during the process of squaring-up the designs for reduction.6

Verso:

Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘6| a’ top centre and ‘1’ centre and ‘CCLXXX 152’ bottom centre, and in ink ‘1021’ bottom left.
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 152’ centre