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 Fragments of Antique Funerary Monuments, ?Capua; and a Study of a Sailing Ship 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fragments of Antique Funerary Monuments, ?Capua; and a Study of a Sailing Ship’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Recto:
Fragments of Antique Funerary Monuments, ?Capua; and a Study of a Sailing Ship 1819
D15910
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 2
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘SAC’ and ‘Capua’ within sketch, top right, and ‘SAMPHCARCHIA [?U VA] Anno MD’ below sketch, bottom right
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘2’ top right and ‘245’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVI 2’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s handwritten inscription suggests that the artist drew these fragments of classical funerary monuments at Capua, a town approximately sixteen miles north of Naples which formed a staging post on the nineteenth-century route from Rome. He was immensely interested in antique statuary, particularly sculptural reliefs and decorative details from sarcophagi, altars, gravestones and vases, and studies can be found throughout his Italian sketchbooks of 1819. For further details see the Vatican Fragments sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CLXXX).
Also on this page is a drawing of a large sailing ship, reminiscent of the one which appears in Turner’s watercolour vignette illustration, Bay of Naples for Rogers’s Italy (see Tate D27660; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 143). In the bottom right-hand corner is an inverted sketch of an unidentified landscape.

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Fragments of Antique Funerary Monuments, ?Capua; and a Study of a Sailing Ship 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-fragments-of-antique-funerary-monuments-capua-and-a-study-of-r1137836, accessed 25 April 2024.