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 > Gandolfo to Naples Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Part of a View of Mergellina and Posillipo from Naples 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Part of a View of Mergellina and Posillipo from Naples’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Recto:
Part of a View of Mergellina and Posillipo from Naples 1819
D15630
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 38
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘281’ bottom right and ‘38’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXIV 38’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch is part of a panoramic view of part of the Gulf of Naples, as seen from the city. Turner’s viewpoint is not precisely known but it appears to be an area of high ground to the east of the Chiaia waterfront, possibly the Pizzofalcone Hill (or Monte Echia) above Castel dell’Ovo.1 The vista looks west and south-west, past the long stretch of the Villa Reale promenade (now the Villa Comunale) towards the coastline of Mergellina and Posillipo. Turner has left much of the foreground detail blank or only faintly outlined, but recognisable half-way up the slopes of the distant Posillipo Hill is the church and bell-tower of Sant’Antonio. The composition continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 38 verso (D15629; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 37a).

Nicola Moorby
May 2010

1
Compare the similar vista in a watercolour by Giovanni Battista Lusieri (1755–1821), View of the Bay of Naples from the Palazzo Sessa 1791 (J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California), reproduced in colour in Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan, Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his Collection, exhibition catalogue, British Museum, London 1996, no.4, pp.112–3.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Part of a View of Mergellina and Posillipo from Naples 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-part-of-a-view-of-mergellina-and-posillipo-from-naples-r1138092, accessed 24 April 2024.