J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Naples, Paestum and Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Studies of Figures; and Three Landscape Sketches, Including the Castle of San Gennaro near Genzano di Rome and a Distant View of ?Nemi 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Figures; and Three Landscape Sketches, Including the Castle of San Gennaro near Genzano di Rome and a Distant View of ?Nemi’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 59 Verso:
Studies of Figures; and Three Landscape Sketches, Including the Castle of San Gennaro near Genzano di Rome and a Distant View of ?Nemi 1819
D16023
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 57 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 189 x 113 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Red Cap Gold [?Tassel] | down the Back | Blue Stockings | Blue | aprons with | Red borders’ and ‘Blue’ and ‘Red’, and ‘Bla | Bl’ and ‘Men wearing [?csses] with green fans’ within sketch of figures at top. Also ‘Buffalos’ bottom centre of second sketch from top, and ‘Cas St Genaro Bridge’ bottom centre of second sketch from bottom
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains four distinct sketches. At the top is a series of figure studies, probably Italian peasants whom Turner observed in the fields on his journey between Naples and Rome. He has annotated the drawings with written observations regarding their colourful costumes.
The remainder are rough on-the-spot landscape views, probably drawn from a moving carriage on the road within the countryside south-east of Rome. The inscription within the second sketch from the bottom indicates that this represents a view of the ruined castle of San Gennaro near Genzano di Roma, see folio 88 (D16079; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 86). The lower vista may depict a distant view of the town of Nemi from the Via Appia. The location of the second sketch from the top is unidentified and is more notable for the atmospheric effects which Turner has recorded including light, scudding clouds and a rainbow. Similar studies can be seen on folio 60 (D16024; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 58).

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Figures; and Three Landscape Sketches, Including the Castle of San Gennaro near Genzano di Rome and a Distant View of ?Nemi 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-studies-of-figures-and-three-landscape-sketches-including-r1137947, accessed 26 April 2024.