The Dark Rigi, the Lake of Lucerne

J.M.W. Turner

Watercolour on paper

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The Dark Rigi is a finished watercolour by J.M.W. Turner depicting Mount Rigi—a mountain in the Swiss Alps viewed from across Lake Lucerne—in the deep, subdued tones of early morning before dawn. It is one of three celebrated watercolours Turner completed in 1842, alongside The Blue Rigi and The Red Rigi, each presenting the same mountain at a different time of day and characterised by a defining colour or tone. Turner, born in London in 1775, was a pioneering British Romantic landscape painter widely regarded as a supreme master of watercolour, and these late Swiss works are considered among the most transcendent of his career for their masterful representation of light and atmosphere. The work was commissioned by the Scottish collector H.A.J. Munro of Novar and has been held in private hands, with the UK government placing a temporary export bar on it in 2019 in recognition of its national importance.