Lot Essay
This watercolour is the product of two schemes by Turner to produce finished watercolours, all but one of Swiss subjects, on commission in 1842 and 1843. John Ruskin described the circumstances in the 'Epilogue' to the catalogue of the exhibition of Turner watercolours from his collection held at the Fine Arts Society in 1878. Early in 1842 Turner placed fifteen sample watercolour sketches in the hands of the dealer Thomas Griffith of Norwood, on the basis of which he would produce ten finished watercolours to order at eighty guineas each; the sketches resulted from his tours of 1840 and 1841. Turner also gave Griffith four finished works as examples of what he could do, including this watercolour of the The Splügen Pass. Griffith succeeded in selling the four finished works and in getting orders for five more. Turner's friend H.A.J. Munro of Novar purchased five, including The Splügen Pass. In fact Turner produced a tenth finished watercolour, which he gave to Griffith as his commission. The following year, 1843, Turner tried to sell another ten finished watercolours of Swiss subjects the same way, but only succeeded in getting five commissions.
John Ruskin also hoped to purchase at least one watercolour in 1842 but his father was abroad on business and Ruskin had neither the money nor the authority to act on his own. As he wrote in 1878, 'The Splugen Pass I saw in an instant to be the noblest Alpine drawing Turner had ever till then made'. In his autobiographical Praeterita he amended this to 'I knew perfectly well that this drawing was the best Swiss landscape yet painted by man; and that it was entirely proper for me to have it, and inexpedient that anybody else should. I ought to have secured it initially, and begged my father's pardon, tenderly ...'. In the event, as Ruskin wrote in 1878, 'I wrote to my father, saying I would fain have that Splugen Pass, if he were home in time to see it, and give me leave. Of more than one drawing I had no hope, for my father knew the worth of eighty guineas'. By the time Ruskin's father did return home The Splügen Pass had been sold to Munro, though Ruskin was allowed to acquire first one, and then another of the group, and also bought that given by Turner to Griffith; he also bought two of the 1843 group.
Later, Ruskin continues, 'Mr Munro some years afterwards would have allowed me to have the Splugen Pass, for four hundred pounds, through White of Maddox Street; my father would then have let me take it for that, but I myself thought it hard on him and me, and would not, thinking it would too much pain my father.' Ruskin was finally given the work by a group of friends on recovering from an illness. This was after the Munro sale, when the watercolour fetched a thousand guineas.
The watercolour on which this finished work in based is now in the Turner Bequest at the Tate Gallery, T.B. CCCLXIV-277 (repr. A. Wilton, Turner Abroad, 1982, pl. 96). This is squarer in format (9 9/16 x 12in. [242 x 305mm.]) and lacks the figures and the detailed rock formation in the foreground. The exact subject was identified at the Munro sale as 'Baths of Pfeffers: Ragaz, Pass of Splügen', the sign 'BAINS' being taken to indicate the turning to these baths off the main Splügen road between Sargans and Chur; the church on the left would then have been that of Maienfeld. However, Wilton has suggested that the church is more likely to be that at Andeer, and that Turner has shown the view looking north from Andeer towards the Via Mala; the large slabs of stone would come from the large granite quarry at Andeer. Turner turned back north after reaching Andeer in 1841, only actually crossing the Splügen Pass on his Swiss tour of 1843.
Ruskin pointed out that the composition of this watercolour is 'very remarkable as an example of Turner's occasional delight in a perfectly straight road seen for four or five miles in length at once'. This occurs in one of Turner's very first Swiss watercolours, St. Hugo denouncing vengeance on the shepherd of Cormayer, in the valley of d'Aoust, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803 (repr. Russell and Wilton, op. cit, p. 4) and the oil painting of Chateaux de St. Michael, Bonneville, Savoy, similarly exhibited at the Royal Academy the same year (M. Butlin and E. Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, 2nd. ed., 1984, pp. 39-40, no. 50, repr. pl. 59). The device probably derives from Poussin's Landscape with a Roman Road (Dulwich College Art Gallery) which Turner could have seen when it belonged to Noel Desenfans and was exhibited in Berners Street in 1802.
Ruskin also remarked on the absence of trees in The Splügen Pass and on its geological interest (1900), and stated in his Epilogue to Volume II of Modern Painters that 'My admiration for it afterwards directed mainly all my mountain-studies and geological researches': In his analysis of the watercolour as reported in the 1900 Fine Arts Society Catalogue, he added that 'Turner's mind was set in making it, on the sympathy of the rocks with the decline of all human power, in their own dissolution'
John Ruskin also hoped to purchase at least one watercolour in 1842 but his father was abroad on business and Ruskin had neither the money nor the authority to act on his own. As he wrote in 1878, 'The Splugen Pass I saw in an instant to be the noblest Alpine drawing Turner had ever till then made'. In his autobiographical Praeterita he amended this to 'I knew perfectly well that this drawing was the best Swiss landscape yet painted by man; and that it was entirely proper for me to have it, and inexpedient that anybody else should. I ought to have secured it initially, and begged my father's pardon, tenderly ...'. In the event, as Ruskin wrote in 1878, 'I wrote to my father, saying I would fain have that Splugen Pass, if he were home in time to see it, and give me leave. Of more than one drawing I had no hope, for my father knew the worth of eighty guineas'. By the time Ruskin's father did return home The Splügen Pass had been sold to Munro, though Ruskin was allowed to acquire first one, and then another of the group, and also bought that given by Turner to Griffith; he also bought two of the 1843 group.
Later, Ruskin continues, 'Mr Munro some years afterwards would have allowed me to have the Splugen Pass, for four hundred pounds, through White of Maddox Street; my father would then have let me take it for that, but I myself thought it hard on him and me, and would not, thinking it would too much pain my father.' Ruskin was finally given the work by a group of friends on recovering from an illness. This was after the Munro sale, when the watercolour fetched a thousand guineas.
The watercolour on which this finished work in based is now in the Turner Bequest at the Tate Gallery, T.B. CCCLXIV-277 (repr. A. Wilton, Turner Abroad, 1982, pl. 96). This is squarer in format (9 9/16 x 12in. [242 x 305mm.]) and lacks the figures and the detailed rock formation in the foreground. The exact subject was identified at the Munro sale as 'Baths of Pfeffers: Ragaz, Pass of Splügen', the sign 'BAINS' being taken to indicate the turning to these baths off the main Splügen road between Sargans and Chur; the church on the left would then have been that of Maienfeld. However, Wilton has suggested that the church is more likely to be that at Andeer, and that Turner has shown the view looking north from Andeer towards the Via Mala; the large slabs of stone would come from the large granite quarry at Andeer. Turner turned back north after reaching Andeer in 1841, only actually crossing the Splügen Pass on his Swiss tour of 1843.
Ruskin pointed out that the composition of this watercolour is 'very remarkable as an example of Turner's occasional delight in a perfectly straight road seen for four or five miles in length at once'. This occurs in one of Turner's very first Swiss watercolours, St. Hugo denouncing vengeance on the shepherd of Cormayer, in the valley of d'Aoust, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803 (repr. Russell and Wilton, op. cit, p. 4) and the oil painting of Chateaux de St. Michael, Bonneville, Savoy, similarly exhibited at the Royal Academy the same year (M. Butlin and E. Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, 2nd. ed., 1984, pp. 39-40, no. 50, repr. pl. 59). The device probably derives from Poussin's Landscape with a Roman Road (Dulwich College Art Gallery) which Turner could have seen when it belonged to Noel Desenfans and was exhibited in Berners Street in 1802.
Ruskin also remarked on the absence of trees in The Splügen Pass and on its geological interest (1900), and stated in his Epilogue to Volume II of Modern Painters that 'My admiration for it afterwards directed mainly all my mountain-studies and geological researches': In his analysis of the watercolour as reported in the 1900 Fine Arts Society Catalogue, he added that 'Turner's mind was set in making it, on the sympathy of the rocks with the decline of all human power, in their own dissolution'