The Death of Actaeon, with a Distant View of Montjovet, Val d’Aosta

In the summer of 1836 Turner, then 61, crossed the Alps with a wealthy Scottish collector, Hugh Munro of Novar, and worked his way down the Val d'Aosta in northwest Italy with a pencil sketchbook. Tate still holds his quick drawings of Montjovet, a village and castle on the road through the lower valley. Back in London he set a story from Ovid against that view. Actaeon, a hunter, came upon the goddess Diana bathing, was turned into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds. Even the title gives the Italian valley equal billing with the myth. At the Royal Academy in 1837 he showed another tale from Ovid, the Story of Apollo and Daphne, and the only oil from the Alpine trip he exhibited was a snowstorm and avalanche in the upper part of the valley. This canvas was still in his possession when he died, and it came to the nation with the Turner Bequest in 1856.