Joseph Mallord William Turner

Turner visited Switzerland every summer from 1840 to 1845, with Lucerne frequently as his base. This late watercolor captures the picturesque qualities of the lake with the distant Museggmauer-- fortified wall that snakes over the hilltops--and the Hof brücke, the covered wooden bridge running across the lake on the right-hand side. The critic John Ruskin, who owned this drawing and hung it in his dining room, admired the atmospheric qualities in Turner's Swiss drawings. Turner, in response, asserted, "Yes, atmosphere is my style." -- Exhibition Label, from "Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection"