Watercolor, gouache, and scratching out on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 11 3/4 x 18 7/8 inches (29.8 x 47.9 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.4715
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
morning | landscape | boats | mountains | villages | figures | cliffs | lake | Grand Tour
Associated Places:
Europe | Switzerland | Schweiz | Uri | Flüelen
Currently On View:
On view
Exhibition History:
J.M.W. Turner: Romance & Reality (Yale Center for British Art, 2025-03-29 - 2025-07-27)Unto this Last: Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin (Yale Center for British Art, 2019-09-05 - 2019-12-08)The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)Papermaking and The Art of Watercolor in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Paul Sandby's "View of…Mr. Whatman's Turkey Mill" (Yale Center for British Art, 2006-02-22 - 2006-06-04)Ruskin - Past: Present: Future (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-01-20 - 2000-02-27)Victorian Landscape Watercolors (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992-11-18 - 1993-01-03)Victorian Landscape Watercolors (Yale Center for British Art, 1992-09-09 - 1992-11-01)Victorian Landscape Watercolors (Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, 1993-02-11 - 1993-04-12)Turner and the Sublime (Yale Center for British Art, 1981-02-11 - 1981-04-19)Turner and the Sublime (British Museum, 1981-05-15 - 1981-09-20)Turner and the Sublime (Art Gallery of Ontario, 1980-11-01 - 1981-01-04)English Landscape (Paul Mellon Collection) 1630-1850 (Yale Center for British Art, 1977-04-19 - 1977-07-17)
Publications:
Timothy J. Barringer, Unto this last : two hundred years of John Ruskin, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2019, p. 133, no. 12, NJ18.R895 .B37 2019 (LC) Oversize (YCBA)Susan Fagence Cooper, Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud, Paul Holberton Publishing, London, 2019, p. 45, fig. 30, NJ18.R895 A12 2019 (LC) (YCBA)Anne Hodge, The works of J.M.W. Turner at the National Gallery of Ireland, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2012, pp. 108, 110, fig. 68, NJ18.T85 H625 2012 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Andrew Wilton, The life and work of J.M.W. Turner, Academy Editions, London, 1979, p. 485, no. 1541, NJ18 T85 +W577 OVERSIZE (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Turner produced this highly finished watercolor of the small town of Flüelen after his fourth and final visit to Switzerland in 1844. More than simply recording the dramatic view he encountered, he united actuality and imagination to create his own distinctive vision. By exaggerating the contrast in scale between the town and surrounding mountains, Turner gives the landscape a feeling of unfathomable vastness. The scattered groups of diminutive figures that populate the foreground, meanwhile, possess an almost otherworldly remoteness. Hazy veils of jewellike color blend individual forms into an indistinct whole. As John Ruskin later described it, the image seems to be “fading away into a mere dream of departing light.” Gallery label for J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality (Yale Center for British Art, March - 29, 2025 - July 27, 2025)