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

This vignette, engraved by Henry le Keux, is one of two designs that Turner made to illustrate the seventh section of Rogers’s Italy, entitled ‘Marguerite de Tours.’1 In this section, Rogers tells the story of the eponymous heroine, who grew up in the Val d’Aosta but eloped with a young man from Martigny, a town located on the opposite side of the Great St Bernard Pass:

Although Marguerite herself does not figure in either of Turner’s illustrations the book’s layout dramatises her movement between the two towns: the section opens with Aosta as its headpiece and closes with a view of Martigny (see Tate D27671; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 154). When the narrator encounters Marguerite, she has returned to Italy to make peace with her dying father and is now beginning her arduous journey back across the Alps.

Situated at the foot of the Great St Bernard Pass, Aosta is a Roman city that has long occupied a key position for European trade and travel. Part of the city’s surviving Roman walls and the magnificent triumphal Arch of Augustus, built in 25 BC, are visible in the foreground. Turner visited Aosta himself during his 1802 trip to the Continent, producing several sketches that may have served him when he designed this vignette over two decades later (see Tate D04502 and D04503; Turner Bequest LXXIV 10 and LXXIV 11).2 Although he may well have referred to these sketches, he also made significant changes to the topography of the city in order to include a number of landmarks in the small space provided. Most notably he added walls to both sides of the arch of Augustus and turned the triple-arched form of the decaying Roman theatre ninety degrees.3 In producing the Italy vignettes, it was not uncommon for Turner to generate a condensed and evocative, if not entirely accurate portrait of a subject that he had previously observed and sketched first-hand. As Cecilia Powell writes, ‘the reason that the Italy illustrations were so popular with generations of English travellers and Italy lovers was not their topographical accuracy (which was in any case variable) ... It was Turner’s poetical concentration of the essence of Italy into the space of a few inches.’ ⁴

Even so, Turner could also be remarkably scrupulous in the execution of certain details. The second engraver’s proof for Aosta bears a note from Turner instructing le Keux to correct the order of the capitals on the arch by changing them from Ionic to Corinthian.5 A more obvious difference between the watercolour and engraved version is in the date that appears on the cross in the foreground. In the original vignette, the cross bears the date ‘1826’, which probably indicates the year of the vignette’s production; Aosta is thematically and stylistically linked to Martigny, which was made on paper watermarked 1826.6 In the engraving, however, this date has been changed to ‘1814’, the year when Rogers himself was in Italy. The cross is perhaps intended to represent the grave of Marguerite’s father, who, we are told, had died shortly before Rogers made her acquaintance.

Verso:

Inscribed in pencil ‘[?7]’ top left and ‘y’ and ‘2a’ centre and ‘CCLXXX.145’ bottom centre
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 145’ lower centre