The Blue Rigi
1842
Watercolour
29.7 × 45 cm

In 1878, John Ruskin wrote, “Turner had never made any drawings like these before, and never made any like them again … He is not showing his head in these, but his heart”.

Ruskin was referring to the three watercolours Turner painted of Mount Rigi in Switzerland: the Dark, the Red, and the Blue Rigis. Each one depicting the same view of the mountain from across Lake Lucerne, but at a different time of day, and thus in an entirely different light.

The sweeping washes of colours, interspersed with some cross-hatching and indentation caused by fingernails, reveal something of the shadowy heights of the mountain and the depths of the lake. His revolutionary approach to landscape painting, already well documented in his many oil paintings, was now extended to the genre of watercolours.

The Blue Rigi was sold at Christie’s for £5.8m in 2006 to a foreign buyer, but needed an export permit. Before this was granted, the Tate, in partnership with the Art Fund, and with many contributions from Tate Members (including a small one from Credible Muggins!), managed to raise enough money to keep the painting in Britain. It will go on display in Tate Britain, alongside the many other examples of Turner’s art held by the Tate.

©  Straight Words, 2007