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 Mole Lighthouse, Naples with Vesuvius Beyond; and Three Views Including the Port of Pozzuoli 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Mole Lighthouse, Naples with Vesuvius Beyond; and Three Views Including the Port of Pozzuoli’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 70 Recto:
The Mole Lighthouse, Naples with Vesuvius Beyond; and Three Views Including the Port of Pozzuoli 1819
D15672
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 58
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘281’ bottom right and ‘58’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXIV 58 (68)’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
One of the most famous landmarks in Naples during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the old lighthouse which stood at the elbow of the former Mole (pier) facing the port and arsenale (naval shipyard) near Castel Nuovo.1 It appears in countless paintings from the period, often looking east out to sea, with Vesuvius and the Sorrentine peninsula in the background.2 This is the view represented here with the L-shaped jetty stretching from the quayside into the boat-filled harbour on the left, and the gently smoking crater of the volcano dominating the horizon beyond. For alternative studies of the lighthouse see folios 36, 67 and 70 verso (D15625, D15688 and D15673; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 35, 65 and 58a). Also on this sheet are three small thumbnail landscape sketches, of which the view in the bottom right-hand corner appears to depict the old port of Pozzuoli from the sea.
During the nineteenth-century survey of the Turner Bequest this page was erroneously numbered ‘58’ instead of ‘68’ (probably by John Ruskin), causing Finberg to list the page as missing.3

Nicola Moorby
May 2010

1
The port of Naples has undergone extensive redevelopment since the early nineteenth century but the approximate position of the lighthouse was near the present-day ferry terminal of Molo Angioino (Stazione Marittima).
2
See for example Thomas Jones (1742–1803), The Bay of Naples and the Mole Lighthouse 1782 (Tate, T08246) and John Robert Cozens (1752–1797), Vesuvius and Somma from the Mole at Naples, (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). Both reproduced in Francis W. Hawcroft, Travels in Italy 1776–1783: Based on the “Memoirs” of Thomas Jones, exhibition catalogue, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 1988, nos.110 and 112, pp.94–99.
3
Finberg 1909, p.545.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Mole Lighthouse, Naples with Vesuvius Beyond; and Three Views Including the Port of Pozzuoli 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-mole-lighthouse-naples-with-vesuvius-beyond-and-three-r1138154, accessed 16 April 2024.