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Works (?) Thomas Girtin and Joseph Mallord William Turner after John Robert Cozens

A Wooded Valley near Bex in Switzerland

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0600: (?) Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) after John Robert Cozens (1752–97), A Wooded Valley, near Bex in Switzerland, 1794 –97, graphite and watercolour on paper, 23.5 × 36 cm, 9 ¼ × 14 ⅛ in. Private Collection.

Photo courtesy of Sotheby's (All Rights Reserved)

Description
Creator(s)
(?) Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) after John Robert Cozens (1752-1797)
Title
  • A Wooded Valley near Bex in Switzerland
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions
23.5 × 36 cm, 9 ¼ × 14 ⅛ in
Inscription

'14' lower right

Object Type
Collaborations; Monro School Copy; Work from a Known Source: Contemporary British
Subject Terms
Swiss View; Hills and Mountains

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0600
Description Source(s)
Auction Catalogue

Provenance

John Lascelles, July 1888; ... Tom Girtin (1913–94); his posthumous sale, Sotheby's, 14 July 1994, lot 70 as 'Travellers in a Swiss Valley' by Joseph Mallord William Turner, unsold; Sotheby's, 21 March 2002, lot 171 as 'Travellers in a Swiss Valley' by Joseph Mallord William Turner; bought by a UK private collector, £7,200

About this Work

This view of a wooded valley near Bex in the Swiss Canton of Vaud south east of Geneva displays many of the signs that mark the unique collaboration between Girtin and his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) at the home of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833). Here they were employed across three winters, probably between 1794 and 1797, to make ‘finished drawings’ from the ‘Copies’ of the ‘outlines or unfinished drawings of Cozens’ and other artists, amateur and professional, either from Monro’s collection or lent for the purpose. As the two young artists later recalled, Girtin generally ‘drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’. ‘They went at 6 and staid till Ten’, which may account for the monochrome appearance of the works, and, as the diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) reported, Turner received ‘3s. 6d each night’, though ‘Girtin did not say what He had’ (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).1

graphite, watercolour and bodycolour on laid paper, on an original mount, 19 × 26.7 cm, 7 ½ × 10 ½ in. Leeds Art Gallery (LEEAG.1953.0013.0091).

The watercolour showing a valley near Bex on the route between Geneva and Martigny was copied from a composition by John Robert Cozens (1752–97) that he executed as a small monochrome study (see figure 1), part of a group of eleven signed drawings all on the same scale and uniformly mounted with their titles added below (Bell and Girtin, 1935, no.11). The Cozens drawing is inscribed ‘Near Bex’, a place that he visited in the late summer of 1776 on the way to the Italian peninsular, adding, incorrectly, that it is 'in the Canton of Bern'. Six of the compositions provided the basis for Monro School copies (see also TG0485, TG0492, TG0494, TG0495, TG0503), but as each are larger to varying degrees than the 26.8 × 18.7 cm (10 ½ × 7 ⅜ in) of the Cozens drawings it is clear that they were not used by Girtin as his source material. Moreover, one of the group titled by Cozens ‘The Approach to Martigny, Rhone Valley, Valais' (Leeds Art Gallery, 13.88/53) is based on a larger on-the-spot drawing dated 1776 now in the Sir John Soane's Museum (44/12/15). Cozens' outline measures 22.9 × 36.2 cm (9 × 14 ¼ in) and given that the Monro School copies invariably follow the dimensions of their source material it is not unreasonable to conclude that the rest of this group of drawings was developed from untraced sketches made by the older artist on his first visit to the Continent. Only one of Cozens’ sketches from 1776 has survived, but others from a year later are consistently large in scale and are generally little more than summary outlines (see TG0589 figure1), which would have needed careful interpretation to create the ‘finished drawings’ that Monro required for his collection. In all, there are as many as sixty Monro School views of the Alpine scenery of France, Switzerland and northern Italy that can, with varying degrees of certainty, be associated with Cozens’ trip to the Continent in 1776-79.

The watercolour appeared on the art market in 2002 with an attribution to Turner alone, and this was the opinion too of the artist’s last descendant, Tom Girtin (1913–94), who actually owned the work for a period. However, although the pencil work in this mountain landscape lacks the characteristic and inventive marks Girtin used in the architectural views, it does not mean that a collaboration between Girtin and Turner is out of the question. Turner’s economical use of washes of a limited palette of blues and greys may obscure much of the pencil drawing here, but Girtin's skill as a draughtsman is still evident in the rapid hatchings that structure the tree-lined hills and in the figures who stroll and sit in the foreground.

A Wooded Valley near Bex in Switzerland

There is another Monro School watercolour of the same composition (see figure 2), incorrectly titled Rocca di Papa. When working from an online image I thought that it had been copied from the watercolour by Girtin and Turner by an unknown visitor to Monro’s home, but having now seen the work and thus able to make allowances for its poor condition with the paper badly discoloured, I now believe that this too is a collaboration between the two artists. Indeed, given that I wrote the entry for the version in a private collection from an old image in an auction catalogue it may be that I will need to revise my view about its authorship especially as there are numerous later copies of the Turner and Girtin collaborations, many made by members of Monro's family. However, on balance I think that this may well be a rare instance of both artists being involved in the repetition of a composition. Working for Monro over the course of three years, it was no doubt all too easy to forget that a slight sketch by Cozens of an alpine subject had already been the subject of an evening's labour.

1794 - 1797

Lake Klöntal, the View Looking West

TG0485

1794 - 1797

The Lake of Mezzola, near Chiavenna, Lake Como in the Distance

TG0492

1794 - 1797

Castelmur Castle, in the Village of Bondo

TG0494

1794 - 1797

A Ravine in the Viamala, between Chur and Chiavenna

TG0495

1794 - 1797

Lake Como

TG0503

1794 - 1797

Tivoli: ‘The Temple of the Sibyl’, Seen from Below

TG0589

by Greg Smith

Footnotes

  1. 1 The full diary entry, giving crucial details of the artists’ work at Monro’s house, is transcribed in the Documents section of the Archive (1798 – Item 2).

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