The Fort of L'Esseillon, Val de la Maurienne, France

The Fort of L'Esseillon, Val de la Maurienne, France

Joseph Mallord William Turner

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Walter C. Baker, a significant drawings collector who served as The Met’s vice president, donated this Turner watercolor to the Museum. We look southwest along the Arc River gorge toward the Fort of L’Esseillon, a stepped construction on a slope in the middle distance, with snowcapped peaks beyond. The complex was built between 1819 and 1836 to guard the Mont-Cenis Pass into Italy after France ceded Savoy to Piedmont. Turner likely borrowed details of the composition from an engraved illustration in an 1827 book written by his friend William Brockedon. The drawing’s detailed handling suggests a date in the 1830s, though it was likely finished before the artist set out for France in 1836—a tour during which he typically worked in a looser manner.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Fort of L'Esseillon, Val de la Maurienne, FranceThe Fort of L'Esseillon, Val de la Maurienne, FranceThe Fort of L'Esseillon, Val de la Maurienne, FranceThe Fort of L'Esseillon, Val de la Maurienne, FranceThe Fort of L'Esseillon, Val de la Maurienne, France

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.