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 > St Peter's Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View of the Forum, Rome, Looking towards the Capitol and the Arch of Septimius Severus 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of the Forum, Rome, Looking towards the Capitol and the Arch of Septimius Severus’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Recto:
View of the Forum, Rome, Looking towards the Capitol and the Arch of Septimius Severus 1819
D16201
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 24
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[?Rome]’ centre underneath sketch
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVIII 24’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains a view of the north-west end of the Forum, probably drawn from a point near the Temple of Castor and Pollux. In the background is the Capitol with the back of the Palazzo Senatorio and in the foreground are the ancient monuments of the Forum, from left to right, the Temple of Saturn, the Temple of Vespasian, the Column of Phocas and the partially excavated Arch of Septimius Severus. The composition of the drawing is similar to another sketch in the Albano Nemi Rome sketchbook, (see Tate D15355; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 32). See this entry for a general discussion of the buildings and Turner’s sketches of the Forum.
Cecilia Powell has noted that this drawing relates to the background composition for Turner’s large oil painting, Forum Romanum, for Mr Soane’s Museum exhibited 1826 (Tate N00504).1

Nicola Moorby
September 2008

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, no.233; Powell 1984, p.255.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of the Forum, Rome, Looking towards the Capitol and the Arch of Septimius Severus 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2008, 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-view-of-the-forum-rome-looking-towards-the-capitol-and-the-r1139712, accessed 24 April 2024.