Joseph Mallord William Turner A Ravine in the Pass of St Gotthard 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
A Ravine in the Pass of St Gotthard 1802
D04627
Turner Bequest LXXV 35
Turner Bequest LXXV 35
Pencil, chalk, watercolour and gouache with scratching out on white wove paper prepared with grey wash, 318 x 475 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXV 35’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LXXV 35’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1878
National Gallery, London, various dates, 1878–1904 (324, as ‘On the Pass of St. Gothard, above Amsteg’).
1934
Four Screens, British Museum, London, July 1934–July 1935 (frame 5).
1972
Das Aquarell 1400–1950, Haus der Kunst, Munich, October 1972–January 1973 (145).
1975
Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, May 1975–February 1976 (30).
1976
Turner und die Schweiz, Kunsthaus, Zürich, October 1976–January 1977 (11).
1979
Exposicion del gran pintor ingles, William Turner: Oleos y acuarelas: Collecciones de la Tate Gallery, British Museum y otros museos ingleses, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, August–September 1979 (6).
1979
Oleos y acuarelas de Joseph Mallord William Turner, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela, October–?November 1979 (6).
1980
Turner and the Sublime, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, November 1980–January 1981, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, February–April 1981, British Museum, London, May–September 1981 (20).
1987
Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, London, April–October 1987 (no catalogue).
1991
Original Eyes: Progressive Vision in British Watercolour 1750–1850, Tate Gallery Liverpool, May–August 1991 (no number).
1998
Turner in the Alps 1802, Tate Gallery, London, November 1998–February 1999, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, March–June 1999 (66).
References
1879
Philip Gilbert Hamerton, The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A., London 1879, p.35, as ‘St. Gothard’.
1902
E.T. Cook (ed.), Ruskin on Pictures: A Collection of Criticisms by John Ruskin not heretofore Re-printed and now Re-edited and Re-arranged, vol.I, London 1902, p.170, as ‘On the Pass of St. Gothard, above Amsteg’.
1903
Charles Holme (ed.), Robert de la Sizeranne, Walter Shaw Sparrow and others, The Genius of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., London, Paris and New York 1903, reproduced pl.50: MW 27.
1904
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, pp.371, 624.
1905
W[illiam] L[ionel] Wyllie, J.M.W. Turner, London 1905, reproduced opposite p.58.
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.202, LXXV 35, as ‘On the Pass of St. Gothard’.
1912
Alex[ander] J. Finberg, Turner’s Water-Colours at Farnley Hall, London 1912, p.23.
1970
N.[Nicholas]A. Serota, ‘J.M.W. Turner’s Alpine Tours’, unpublished M.A. Report, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1970, p.14.
1972
Walter Koschatzky, Herbert Pée, Dieter Kuhrmann and others, Das Aquarell 1400–1950, exhibition catalogue, Haus der Kunst, Munich 1972, pp.106, 128 reproduced.
1975
Malcolm Cormack, J.M.W. Turner, R.A. 1775–1851: A Catalogue of Drawings and Watercolours in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Cambridge 1975, p.35 note 6.
1975
Andrew Wilton, Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London 1975, p.39 reproduced.
1980
Andrew Wilton, Turner and the Sublime, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 1980, p.118 reproduced.
1989
Ann Sumner, Ruskin and the English Watercolour: From Turner to the Pre-Raphaelites, exhibition catalogue, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 1989, p.77.
1991
David Blayney Brown, Original Eyes: Progressive Vision in British Watercolour 1750–1850, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery Liverpool 1991, pp. 38 reproduced, 39–40.
1998
David Blayney Brown, Turner in the Alps 1802, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1998, pp.182–3 reproduced in colour.
1999
David Blayney Brown, Turner et les Alpes 1802, exhibition catalogue, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny 1999, pp.182–3 reproduced in colour.
2002
Lawrence Gowing, ‘Turner’s First Continental Tour in 1802’, Turner Society News, no.91, August 2002, pp.10, 12 note 37.
For Turner’s visit to the St Gotthard Pass and Reuss Gorge in 1802 see Introduction to the sketchbook and notes to D04628; Turner Bequest LXXV 36. This dramatic and expressive study, richly coloured, was particularly admired by John Ruskin. In manuscript notes made in 1880 on Turner’s drawings of the St Gotthard, he described it as ‘the great one.’1 Ruskin recommended it for copying and there is a copy of it by Isabella Lee Jay (fl. 1882–1896) in the Ruskin Galleries, Bembridge, Isle of Wight. Although Ruskin did not own any of her works himself, he considered her copies after Turner ‘the most accurate and beautiful I have yet seen, in many respects attaining fully to the expression of the master’s most subtle qualities’2 and commissioned one by her after Thomas Matthews Rooke (1842–1942) for the Guild of St George, Sheffield.
Verso:
Blank
Inscribed by a later hand in pencil ‘11’ within a circle
David Blayney Brown
October 2011
How to cite
David Blayney Brown, ‘A Ravine in the Pass of St Gotthard 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2014, https://www