- Museum number
- 1958,0712.387
- Description
-
Mont Blanc from the banks of the Arve, near Sallenches in Savoy, after J R Cozens; view of the mountain from the river which winds along the bottom of a valley with wooded banks. c.1792-3
Watercolour over graphite
- Production date
- 1792-1793 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 231 millimetres
-
Width: 376 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Sloan 1998
Dr Thomas Monro (1759-1833) was a specialist in mental illness and, as a dedicated amateur artist, had known John Robert Cozens long before he was consigned to his care in 1792. Monro moved in a circle of collectors, amateurs and patrons of British art, and when he took up residence in one of the great new houses in the Adelphi in the Strand he invited these friends and young artists, including Turner, Thomas Girtin, Thomas Hearne and Edward Dayes, to gather there to study and copy his collection. His friends also lent works from their collections, among them many watercolours, drawings and sketchbooks by Cozens. Monro's purpose in running this 'academy' was partly to offer the artists the opportunity to study and improve their own work, but he also paid them a small amount for their copies, which he kept.
In November 1798 Turner and Girtin told the diarist Joseph Farington that they "had been employed by Dr. Monro 3 years to draw at his house in the evenings. They went at 6 and staid till Ten. Girtin drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects. They were chiefly employed in copying the outlines or unfinished drawings of Cozens &c &c of which Copies they made finished drawings".¹ At Dr Monro's sale these drawings were described variously as by Turner or Girtin, but many were the combined efforts of both artists. The work of determining the different hands has barely begun; Lloyd purchased his watercolours as examples by Turner alone, and indeed they do not bear any of the hallmarks of Girtin's distinctive pencil style found on many of the Monro school drawings.
Lloyd acquired the view of Mont Blanc early in his collecting career, when he was visiting Agnew's annual exhibitions and buying works without a particular collecting policy in mind. This clearly caught his eye as a view of a mountain that was the focus of his own Alpine climbing expeditions. The composition is based on a water-colour which once belonged to Richard Payne Knight, with whom Cozens made his first visit to the Alps in 1776.² The view of Posillipo is based on sketches made by Cozens on his second trip to Italy, in the company of William Beckford in 1782, but, like 1958,0712.387, it is not an exact copy of Cozens's original.³ It is from a group Lloyd purchased at Lord Northwick's sale in 1921, when he was concerned to fill gaps in his collection of Turner's work.
1. Quoted in Wilton 1984, p. 9.
2. BM 1900,0411.13; Bell and Girtin (5).
3. See Bell and Girtin (282, 294).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1922-3, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 'John Robert Cozens', no.75
1998 May-Sept., BM, J.M.W.Turner: Lloyd Bequest, no.2(a)
- Acquisition date
- 1958
- Acquisition notes
- UNDER THE TERMS OF THE BEQUEST, NONE OF THE PRINTS OR DRAWINGS BEQUEATHED BY R. W. LLOYD MAY BE LENT OUTSIDE THE BRITISH MUSEUM (Registration Numbers 1958,0712.318 to 3149).
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1958,0712.387
