Mer de Glace, in the Valley of Chamouni, Switzerland

Between 1799 and 1815, the wars with Napoleon made recreational travel on the Continent more or less impossible, with the exception of a period of less than a year following the 1802 Treaty of Amiens. Turner took advantage of the temporary cessation of hostilities to make his first trip to the Continent, spending three months traveling through France and Switzerland and making more than five hundred sketches. On his return, he dismantled two of his sketchbooks and mounted over a hundred of the most highly finished drawings in an album to show prospective patrons. This proved to be an effective strategy, as Turner received numerous commissions for finished watercolors of Alpine views from collectors, including Walter Fawkes, who was to become one of the artist’s closest friends and most supportive patrons, and who owned this drawing. The watercolor has traditionally been identified with one of Turner’s 1803 Royal Academy submissions, entitled “Glacier and Source of the Arveron, Going Up to the Mer de Glace”, but Eric Shanes has recently suggested that the exhibited work was a watercolor formerly owned by Fawkes and now in the National Gallery of Wales, Cardiff (Wilton, “Turner”, 1979, no. 376) and that Turner made the present drawing for Fawkes around 1814. Both watercolors were included in an exhibition Fawkes held at his London house in 1819. Shanes has painstakingly examined the catalogue and contemporary representations of the installation, noting that the Center’s drawing was exhibited as “Mer de Glace, in the Valley of Chamouni, Switzerland”, whereas the Cardiff drawing bore the title “Source de l’Arveron, Valley of Chamouni”. Neither title corresponds exactly to the Royal Academy submission; moreover, the Cardiff drawing, which is smaller and considerably less ambitious in technical terms, seems a less likely candidate for exhibition at the Academy than the spectacular Yale watercolor. In the absence of conclusive documentary evidence, much of this argument depends on technical and stylistic issues. Although Shanes’ suggestion that an 1803 dating for this highly sophisticated watercolor is too early may be persuasive, it is not inconceivable that Turner could have produced it at that moment in his career, and a dating of 1814 seems somewhat late. Shanes’ thesis is extremely thought provoking, however, and merits more detailed discussion than this entry permits. -- Gillian Forrester, 2007-01