The Source of the Arvaron in the Valley of Chamouni, Savoy, part XII, plate 60 from "Liber Studiorum"

The Source of the Arvaron in the Valley of Chamouni, Savoy, part XII, plate 60 from "Liber Studiorum"

Joseph Mallord William Turner

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Turner distilled his ideas about landscape In "Liber Studiorum" (Latin for Book of Studies), a series of seventy prints plus a frontispiece published between 1807 and 1819. To establish the compositions, he made brown watercolor drawings and here, unusually, entrusted the preliminary etching to Dawe before applying mezzotint himself to develop tone. Based on sketches made during Turner's 1802 Swiss tour, the image represents a glacier fronted by pines and bolders, with slopes behind plunging towards a sunlit valley and a chain of snow capped peaks. Turner likely intended the composition to pair with "Mill Near the Grand Chartreuse" (no. 54), and applied the letter "M" in the upper margin to indicate his category of Mountainous landscape.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Source of the Arvaron in the Valley of Chamouni, Savoy, part XII, plate 60 from "Liber Studiorum"The Source of the Arvaron in the Valley of Chamouni, Savoy, part XII, plate 60 from "Liber Studiorum"The Source of the Arvaron in the Valley of Chamouni, Savoy, part XII, plate 60 from "Liber Studiorum"The Source of the Arvaron in the Valley of Chamouni, Savoy, part XII, plate 60 from "Liber Studiorum"The Source of the Arvaron in the Valley of Chamouni, Savoy, part XII, plate 60 from "Liber Studiorum"

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.