Chateaux de St. Michael, Bonneville, Savoy

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Artist: J. M. W. Turner (British, 1775–1851)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 36 x 48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 cm)
Museum: Yale Center for British Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

In July 1802, J. M. W. Turner set sail for France to make his first Continental tour, taking advantage of a peace treaty recently signed by Britain and France. By August he had reached Bonneville in the Alps, from where he crossed the border into Switzerland before returning to England in mid-October via Paris. Turner toured the Alps on foot, keeping to a grueling schedule and filling sketchbooks along the way.

Once back in London he made a pair of Alpine landscapes that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803 and which were much admired by the critics. This is one of them, titled by the artist using a misspelled combination of French and English. It derives its inspiration from the seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin, whose work Turner had studied in the Louvre while visiting Paris. John Ruskin considered this painting “in every respect a magnificent example of his early style.”

Text: Yale Center for British Art.