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 > Albano, Nemi, Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Forum, Rome, from the Palatine 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Forum, Rome, from the Palatine’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 50 Verso:
The Forum, Rome, from the Palatine 1819
D15390
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 49 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this sketch is a view of the Roman Forum from the south-east, standing on the Palatine Hill. The Roman remains within the dip in the centre include, from left to right: the Temple of Saturn, the Column of Phocas and the Arch of Septimius Severus. These are flanked by the more modern buildings of the Palazzo Senatorio, the dome of Santi Luca e Martina and the Curia beyond. Turner did not have enough paper left to draw the full height of the Capitoline Tower and so sketched the statue of the goddess Roma which surmounts the Senatorial Palace separately to the left-hand side. The composition also spills over slightly onto the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 51 (D15391; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 50). The juxtaposition of ancient and modern buildings in the Forum seen from higher ground is a theme Turner would later revisit in his oil painting, Modern Rome – the Campo Vaccino exhibited 1839 (private collection on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland).1
For a general discussion of Turner’s depictions of the Forum see folio 32 (D15355).

Nicola Moorby
May 2008

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, no.379.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Forum, Rome, from the Palatine 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-the-forum-rome-from-the-palatine-r1132685, accessed 23 September 2024.