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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Studies from 1802 Continental Tour ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Lake and Town of Brienz: Moonlight c.1806-9

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Lake and Town of Brienz: Moonlight’ c.1806-9
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Lake and Town of Brienz: Moonlight c.1806–9
D04898
Turner Bequest LXXX E
Watercolour and white chalk or gouache on white wove paper, 285 x 400 mm
Watermarked ‘1801’
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This ethereal study of a moonlit Lake Brienz was based on a pencil sketch in the Rhine, Strassburg and Oxford sketchbook used in 1802 (Tate D04774; Turner Bequest LXXVII 34), which Turner labelled with the initial ‘F’, indicating the commission from Walter Fawkes for the finished watercolour (private collection)1 variously dated c.18062 or 1809.3 Turner included ‘2 Brientz. Moonlight’ in a list of French and Swiss subjects written on the back of a random pencil drawing (Tate D08253; Turner Bequest CXX m).
Turner made his initial pencil drawing from a boat, looking towards the town of Brienz, on the left, and the Brünig Pass. His boat trip must have ended after dark and this broadly washed study concentrates on atmosphere and reflection, without much detail; the town is a faint silhouette of darker colour and there are none of the boats present in the finished version.
The exact identity and title of the Fawkes watercolour is uncertain; Wilton gives a separate listing for the Town of Brienz, Switzerland exhibited by Fawkes at his London house at 45 Grosvenor Place in 1819, but acknowledges that this could have been the lake scene.4 Turner may have planned the moonlight view, showing boats approaching Brienz at evening, as a pair with a morning scene taken from the town’s quay with a boat setting out, which he dated 1809 (British Museum, London);5 together they would have recalled a day’s excursion on the lake such as the one he made to the castle of Ringgenberg, of which he also made a watercolour for Fawkes in 1809 (Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio).6 However, the dated view of Brienz quay was not bought by Fawkes.
1
Wilton 1979, p.342 nos.374 or 375.
2
Eric Shanes, ‘Identifying Turner’s Chamonix Water-colours’, The Burlington Magazine, vol.142, November 2000, p.694.
3
Hill 1992, p.124 where reproduced in colour.
4
Wilton 1979, p.342 no.375.
5
Ibid., p.343 no.386.
6
Ibid., pp.343–4 no.388.
Technical notes:
The white wove paper is watermarked ‘1801’. To achieve depth of nocturnal colouring, Turner seems to have given much of the sheet a preliminary wash of grey, leaving a circle untouched for the moon.
Verso:
Blank

David Blayney Brown
January 2012

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The Lake and Town of Brienz: Moonlight c.1806–9 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-lake-and-town-of-brienz-moonlight-r1147459, accessed 21 November 2024.