Le lac des Quatre-Cantons : la baie d'Uri vue au-dessus de Brunnen

Turner went to Switzerland for the last time in 1844. He was 69, and he had been returning to Lake Lucerne almost every summer since 1841, staying at Brunnen and climbing above the village to look down the Bay of Uri, the southern arm of the lake. That stretch of water carries the William Tell story, and by the 1840s steamers were running tourists along it. He painted this in oils once he was back in London, from the studies he had made on the spot, catching the mists that hang in that part of the lake. He never exhibited it and never sold it. It was still in his house when he died in 1851, and it came to the nation with everything else found there.