This remarkable watercolour was commissioned in 1809 by Walter Fawkes (1769-1825), Turner's great friend and patron and has only ever appeared at auction once, in June 1890, when it was sold by the Fawkes family and acquired by Agnew’s of London on behalf of Sir Donald Currie, the most important Turner collector of the late 19th century. The last time the watercolour was seen in public was in 1906, when it was included in the Royal Academy’s major exhibition of Old Masters that was organised for that year. Full of grandeur, colour and light, Turner’s watercolour captures the mesmerising beauty of Lake Geneva and sees him immerse himself in Switzerland - the landscape of which was not only to revolutionise his way of thinking but would also go on to inspire him to create some of his greatest work.
Turner at 250: Celebrating the Master of Light with Three Rare Works
The scourge of the Napoleonic Wars, which had raged continuously since 1793, had meant that for the entirety of his adult life, Turner had been denied the possibility of travelling on the Continent. At last, in early 1802, with the Peace of Amiens, hostilities ceased, and Turner seized his chance. He was twenty-seven years old, already a full member of the Royal Academy and an artist who was coveted by many of the leading British collectors of the day.
That summer he was away from London for just under nine weeks but whereas the vast majority of his countrymen traveled only as far as Paris, Turner spent comparatively little time there, instead - very deliberately - setting his sights to the south and in particular to the natural wonders that were (and still are) the mountains and lakes of the French and Swiss Alps. Unusually for him, he travelled with a companion, Newby Lowson (1773-1853), a country squire from County Durham of about his age. Full of youthful energy and no doubt aware that they must capitalise on the golden opportunity that the peace had afforded them, Turner and Lowson sought out not only the most celebrated places in the region, such as Geneva, Zurich and the waterfalls at Schaffhausen, but they also made a point of exploring, either on mule-back or on foot, some of the remote valleys and passes where very few Englishmen had ever set foot (see fig. 1 for their full itinerary).

The tour was tough, with the need to negotiate long distances, bad roads and uncomfortable lodgings, however, when Turner returned to London in late October, he was in a position of great strength, for not only did he now have invaluable first-hand knowledge of this sublime part of the Continent, but he was also in possession of a ‘treasure trove’ of sketchbooks and other visual material that he could refer back to whenever he chose.1 Indeed, Turner’s tour of 1802 became even more significant because in May of the following year, the peace treaty failed and, once again, as a civilian, it became impossible to travel to Europe until after the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.
In contrast to the horrors of war, all is at peace in the present watercolour. Turner has positioned himself close to the hamlet of Chardonne on the northern shores of Lake Geneva, near its extreme eastern end. It is a glorious summer's day, full of bright sunshine and gentle breezes. In the foreground, two colourfully dressed figures, who probably work in the surrounding vineyards, rest amongst the boulders, their eyes shaded by their wide-brimmed hats. While the woman looks directly back at us, her companion, a man, gazes out onto one of the most beautiful views in all of Switzerland. He looks south-east with the village of Vevey, where Jean-Jacques Rousseau had briefly lived in the 1730s, lying directly below. The village of Montreux is hidden in the 'elbow of the lake' to the left, but Turner takes care to mark the presence of the famous Château de Chillon on the far shore, a place that so inspired Lord Bryon, when he visited in 1816. The serene snowcapped mountains that rise up above the lake include, amongst others and from left to right, the mighty Dent de Morcles (2969m), Le Catogne (2589m) and Dents du Midi (3258m).
Technically speaking this watercolour is a tour de force. Turner’s palette in the foreground is all ochers and burnt umbers; the nearly raw pigment has been scumbled on in order to intensify the feeling of the dry, dusty summer heat. This contrasts dramatically with his liquid treatment of pigments beyond. His choice of a complex colour-chart, which ranges from the lightest of greens to the darkest of blues, has enabled him to emphasise both the delicious coolness of the deep lake and also the vaporous nature of the chain of mountains, which seem to hover, ever shifting in the changing light, between water and sky. Close inspection of the lake’s calm surface reveals Turner’s employment of his virtuoso 'scratching out’ method, used to indicate the presence of the occasional white-sailed boat and the sparkle of the sun on the water itself.
According to a list written by Turner in his so-called ‘Greenwich’ sketchbook, the present watercolour was commissioned by Walter Fawkes on 6 March 1809, along with three Yorkshire subjects and a further seven views of Switzerland.2 Turner had known Fawkes since at least 1804, when he had acquired two large scale Swiss watercolours from him.3 In August of 1808, Fawkes invited Turner to stay with him and his family at Farnley Hall, their home in Yorkshire. He was there for three weeks and during that time he formed a very close friendship with his host, one that would endure until Fawkes's death in 1825 and that would be perhaps the most significant of his life. Fawkes himself had travelled to the Alps during his Grand Tour of 1790 and would eventually own two of Turner’s Swiss oil paintings, as well as over twenty of his Swiss watercolours.4
In 1890, Fawkes’s grandson, Ayscough Fawkes (1831-1899), sold sixty-two of his family’s watercolours by Turner at Christie’s. The present work was among them and it achieved £997, one of the highest prices of the sale. The buyer, via Agnew’s, was Sir Donald Currie, a man of humble origins from west Scotland, who built up a shipping empire and who, in 1881, was knighted for his services to British industry by Queen Victoria. Passionate about Turner, it is estimated that over the course of his lifetime, he owned no fewer than fifty-seven of his watercolours and fourteen oil paintings.
In this, the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, it is a particular honour for Sotheby’s to present for sale his Lake of Geneva from Above Vevey, a watercolour - full of majesty and beauty - that has been held in the highest of regard since it left his studio over two centuries ago.
We are very grateful to Ian Warrell and Professor David Hill for their help when cataloguing this lot.
1.See for example: the France, Savoy, Piedmont Sketchbook; the Grenoble Sketchbook; the Lake Thun Sketchbook (all Tate Britain)
2.Tate Britian, Turner Bequest CII & for further information about the Fawkes commission of 1809 please see E. Shanes, J.M.W. Turner, The First Forty Years 1775-1815, New Haven 2016, p. 490
3.The Passage of Mount St Gothard, taken from the Centre of the Teufels Bruch (Devil’s Bridge), Switzerland, and The Reichenbach Falls (Abbott Hall Art Gallery, Kendal and the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford respectively)
4.For further information on Fawkes’ collection of watercolours, see: L. Bailey, op. cit., pp. 16-20