- Museum number
- 1958,0712.410
- Description
-
Castle of Chillon; seen in the mid-distance by the side of a lake, a mountain range enclosing the lake, on a bank in the foreground two women seated and one standing before a clump of trees, a boat on the lake at right. 1809
Watercolour
- Production date
- 1809
- Dimensions
-
Height: 281 millimetres
-
Width: 395 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
-
Turner made sketches of the Chateau de Chillon during his 1802 tour to Switzerland, on returning to the eastern end of the Lake of Geneva after his excursion to see Mont Blanc. There are no sketches or studies which correspond very closely to the present view; however, it may be based on the study he titled 'Lac de Geneve from Vevay' one of the drawings preserved in the Grenoble sketchbook (TB LXXIV-42; see, D.B.Brown, 'Turner in the Alps 1802', Tate 1998, cat. 57). In the watercolour, Turner has considerably augmented the height of the mountains behind the castle, as he often did, and included in the distance the huge snowy mass of the Dents du Midi, in actuality a far more angular profile than they appear here.
An oil painting of this end of the lake, entitled 'The Lake of Geneva from Montreux, Chillion &c' was exhibited at Turner's Gallery in 1810 and subsequently acquired by Walter Fawkes (B&J 103). Another watercolour of Chillon assumed to be of similar date but now known only from its title in sale records is W 395. Turner returned to make further sketches of the castle in the Val d'Aosta sketchbook in 1836 (TB CCXCIII); a distant view of the fortress from the opposite direction is in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (W1456; C. Nugent and M Croal, 'Turner watercolours from Manchester', 1997, cat. 63).
[above information provided by T. Wilcox, 2003]
-
Sloan 1998
In 1810 Turner exhibited in his own gallery in Harley Street an oil painting of the 'Lake of Geneva' from a high point above Montreux, showing the Castle of Chillon and the mouth of the Rhone in the valley at the end of the lake beyond (B&J 103). The mood of the oil painting was Italianate, with stone pines dominating the composition and a group of dancing women in the foreground reminiscent of nymphs in a painting by Claude. It was purchased by Walter Fawkes, a friend of Sir John Swinburne who commissioned the present watercolour and the view of the Lake of Brienz while Turner was working on the oil. All were based on sketches made on his first visit to the Alps in 1802. The larger watercolour (1958,0712.409) has often been described, like the large oil painting, as Italianate in mood; but the smaller view of the Castle of Chillon, although it could be taken from a detail of the composition in oil, could never be described as anything but Swiss. The costumes of the women in the foreground and the activity they are engaged in are specific to the location: their pointed hats and the gloves for bleaching worn by the figure on the left have all been carefully studied and recorded by the artist, as have the fishermen in the boat to the right.
The fresh breeze coming from the lake stirs up the ripples and waves on the shore and billows out the sheet held by the standing figure in white, whose gesture points to the castle in the shadow of the steep mountainside. Lights glimmer from its windows and shine from the tips of its turrets, but the shade in which it stands heightens the cold white snow on the Dents du Midi beyond. A mood of sunny calm would be totally inappropriate for a view of a fortress famous for its dungeons, which held the 'Prisoner of Chillon' - a prior of Geneva who was chained to one of its pillars for four years in the sixteenth century for attempting to introduce the Reformation to Catholic Savoy. A few years after Turner painted this watercolour, the location became even more renowned as the setting of Byron's celebrated poem 'The Prisoner of Chillon' (1816). The poet had been inspired by the romantic site of the castle and its tale during his notorious visit to Switzerland in 1816 when he met Percy Bysshe Shelley and his young wife, Mary. She too had been greatly moved by her experience of Chillon, and the future authoress of Frankenstein pronounced the dungeons to be an enduring symbol of "that cold and inhuman tyranny, which it has been the delight of man to exercise over man".¹
1. Quoted in Wilton 1982 (13).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1887, RA, no.46
1919, Agnew's, no. 11
1966 Feb, BM, Turner Lloyd Bequest, no.7
1969 Feb, BM, Turner Lloyd Bequest, no.7
1987 Feb 5 - May 25, BM, 'An A-Z of P&D'
1991 May-Aug, London, British Library, Swiss Confederation, no.II.6.10
1998 May-Sept., BM, J.M.W.Turner: Lloyd Bequest, no.11
- 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
- 1958,0712.410