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 The Gulf of Naples Seen from Vesuvius; and the Summit of the Volcano from the Hermitage 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Gulf of Naples Seen from Vesuvius; and the Summit of the Volcano from the Hermitage’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 47 Verso:
The Gulf of Naples Seen from Vesuvius; and the Summit of the Volcano from the Hermitage 1819
D15647
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 45 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner made a series of sketches of Naples and the surrounding landscape as seen from the ascent to the summit of Vesuvius, see folio 46 verso (D15645; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 44a). The drawings on this page are on-the-spot sketches associated with that expedition. On the lower half of the sheet is a very rough outline of a view of the Gulf of Naples seen from the slopes of the volcano. In the top right-hand corner meanwhile is a study of the top of the mountain with the gently smoking crater. The building in the foreground appears to be the small hermitage on the road from Resina to the summit where travellers were able to rest and refresh themselves.1 It stood near the present-day observatory.

Nicola Moorby
May 2010

1
Compare nineteenth-century prints, for example, a lithograph after Charles Redmond, L’Hermitage du Vesuve, 1828, reproduced at http://www.philographikon.com/printsitalysz.html, accessed May 2010.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Gulf of Naples Seen from Vesuvius; and the Summit of the Volcano from the Hermitage 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-the-gulf-of-naples-seen-from-vesuvius-and-the-summit-of-the-r1138109, accessed 23 April 2024.