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 > Pompeii, Amalfi, &c., Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View of the Garden and Triclinium of the Villa of Diomedes, Pompeii 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of the Garden and Triclinium of the Villa of Diomedes, Pompeii’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
View of the Garden and Triclinium of the Villa of Diomedes, Pompeii 1819
D15744
Turner Bequest CLXXXV 4
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Sea’ above line of horizon, far right
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘278’ bottom right and ‘4’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXV 4’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner entered the archaeological site of Pompeii from the north-west along the Via dei Sepolcri (Street of the Tombs). The first set of ruins he came to therefore was the Villa of Diomedes, an opulent suburban house and garden first excavated during the years 1771–4, which stands on the right-hand side of the road just outside of the main city walls.1 This sketch depicts a view of the colonnaded garden which lies at the back of the complex on a lower level to the house. Turner’s viewpoint is from the upper terrace looking south across the garden towards the distant peaks of Monte Faito, on the Sorrentine peninsula. Visible in the central foreground is the empty basin of a former fountain and the remains of a raised triclinium (a summer dining room), built to face the spectacular sea view to the west (labelled as such on the right of the composition).2
For a general discussion of Turner’s visit to Pompeii see the introduction to the sketchbook, and for further views of the Villa of Diomedes see folios 2 and 3 verso (D15741 and D15743).

Nicola Moorby
September 2010

1
Further north-west on the site today is the Villa dei Misteri (Villa of Mysteries) but this was not discovered until the early twentieth century.
2
For a similar near-contemporaneous view see C. Weidenmuller, A View of the Villa of Diomedes, from Le case ed i monumenti di Pompei disegnati e descritti, published 1854–96. Reproduced in colour in Roberto Cassanelli, Pier Luigi Ciapparelli, Enrico Colle et al., Houses and Monuments of Pompeii: The Works of Fausto and Felice Niccolini, Los Angeles 1997, pl.86, pp.136–7.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of the Garden and Triclinium of the Villa of Diomedes, Pompeii 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 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-view-of-the-garden-and-triclinium-of-the-villa-of-diomedes-r1138210, accessed 23 April 2024.