390 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

years since he had first seen the Alps; (the source of the Arveron, in Mr. Fawkes’s collection, which could not have been painted till he had seen the thing itself, bears date 1800,)¹ and the direction of his journey in 1840 marks his fond memory of that earliest one; for, if we look over the Swiss studies and drawings executed in his first period, we shall be struck by his fondness for the pass of the St. Gothard; the most elaborate drawing in the Farnley collection is one of the Lake of Lucerne from Fluelen;² and, counting the Liber Studiorum subjects, there are, to my knowledge, six compositions taken at the same period from the pass of St. Gothard, and, probably, several others are in existence.³ The valleys of Sallenches and Chamouni, and Lake of Geneva, are the only other Swiss scenes which seem to have made very profound impressions on him.

He returned in 1841 to Lucerne; walked up Mont Pilate on foot, crossed the St. Gothard, and returned by Lausanne and Geneva. He made a large number of coloured sketches on this journey, and realised several of them on his return. The drawings thus produced are different from all that had preceded them, and are the first which belong definitely to what I shall henceforward call his Third period.

The perfect repose of his youth had returned to his mind, while the faculties of imagination and execution appeared in renewed strength; all conventionality being done away by the force of the impression which he had received from the Alps, after his long separation from them. The drawings are marked by a peculiar largeness and simplicity

¹ [The reading of the dates on the Farnley drawings is matter of some dispute. It is, however, now generally agreed that 1802 was the date of Turner’s first Continental journey. Ruskin in his last catalogue of the Turner drawings at the National Gallery (Group VIII.) gives the date as 1803 (see Vol. XIII., and compare Vol. III. p. 235 n.).]

² [Now in the collection of Sir Donald Currie.]

³ [There are five such compositions, of Turner’s early period, in the National Gallery alone-namely Nos. 476 and 477 (the drawings for Liber Studiorum), No. 320 (“The Old Road, Pass of the St. Gothard”), No. 321 (“The Old Devil’s Bridge”), and No. 324 (“On the Pass of the St. Gothard above Amsteg”). The “profound impression” made upon Turner from the first by the valleys of Sallenches, Chamouni, and the Lake of Geneva may similarly be traced in the National Gallery, as also in the catalogue of Ruskin’s collection (see Vol. XIII.).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]