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

Some of the most famous panoramas of Rome could be seen from the heights of Monte Mario, a hill to the north of the city (for a general discussion see Tate D16174; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 9a). This sketch depicts the view looking south from a point near the Villa Madama, a sixteenth-century estate built for the Medici family on the eastern slopes, famous for its garden loggia designed by Raphael. The composition encompasses a sweep of approximately ninety degrees from the Esquiline Hill on the left, to St Peter’s on the right. Identifiable landmarks visible across the horizon include, from left to right: the obelisk of Piazza dell’Esquilino framed by the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore; the long stretch of the Quirinal Palace; the Colosseum; the Capitoline Hill; the Castel Sant’Angelo; San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, with the Aventine Hill beyond; San Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculum Hill; and on the far right; St Peter’s and the Vatican. Turner recorded the same viewpoint within the St Peter’s sketchbook (see Tate D16178–D16181; Turner Bequest 11a–13). He also made several alternative images featuring the view from Monte Mario within this sketchbook, see folios 33, 48, 57 and 60 (D16360, D16377, D16388, D16391) and loose sheets (D16337, D16342, D16350, D16352; CLXXXIX 11, 16, 24, 26).

As Cecilia Powell has discussed, the visual approach of depicting a distant prospect of the city from Monte Mario had a long artistic tradition.1 Turner may have known similar examples by his eighteenth-century landscape predecessors such as Richard Wilson’s Rome from the Villa Madama 1753 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven),2 or John Robert Cozens’s, Rome from the Villa Mellini circa 1783–8 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge),3 whilst an example of a contemporaneous view in watercolour is by François Keiserman (1765–1833), Veduta di Roma e della Campagna da Monte Mario 1819 (private collection).4 The large number of detailed studies devoted to the subject within this sketchbook suggests that Turner was seriously exploring the idea as a potential theme for a painting. Indeed, the version on this page eventually provided the compositional basis for Rome, from the Monte Mario circa 1820–1 (private collection),5 one of a number of finished watercolours painted for Turner’s great friend and patron, Walter Fawkes, following the artist’s 1819 Italian tour. The topographical details, including the trees and buildings in the immediate foreground are extremely close to Turner’s original sketch. The artist has even indicated the same plume of smoke rising from the Viale Angelico, between the river and the small villa on the left.

Like many drawings within the Rome C. Studies sketchbook, the composition has been executed over a washed grey background and Turner has created areas of pale highlights within the sky and landscape by rubbing through to the white paper beneath. John Ruskin described the work as ‘exquisite’ and ‘a perfect example of Turner’s most deliberate pencil drawing’ for which ‘no terms of admiration can be too high’.6 He praised the accuracy of the details and the artist’s judgement in omitting ‘unhelpful’ objects.7 Finberg similarly described Turner’s 1819 views from Monte Mario as ‘exquisite’ pieces which had ‘long been among the most admired of the drawings exhibited in the Turner Water-Colour Rooms at the National Gallery’.8 Unfortunately, in common with many of the sketches and watercolours chosen for display during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it has suffered from overexposure to light and the paper has become irreversibly faded and discoloured. Peter Bower has suggested that this is probably down to the high content of indigo in the grey watercolour wash, rather than properties within the paper.9

Verso:

Blank, except for traces of grey watercolour wash; stamped in black ‘CLXXXIX 31’ bottom left.