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 Part of a View from the Camaldoli Hill, with Vesuvius, the Bay of Naples and Posillipo 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Part of a View from the Camaldoli Hill, with Vesuvius, the Bay of Naples and Posillipo’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 76 Recto:
Part of a View from the Camaldoli Hill, with Vesuvius, the Bay of Naples and Posillipo 1819
D15877
Turner Bequest CLXXXV 74
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Capri [?and I]’ top right and ‘San [?Carva]’ bottom right
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘278’ top left, inverted and ‘74’ bottom left, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXV 74’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch is part of a panoramic 180-degree view from the hill of Camaldoli looking along the Tyrrhenian coastline from Vesuvius in the east to the Gulf of Pozzuoli in the west. Turner’s contemporary, James Hakewill (1778–1843), drew a similar vista in 1816 inscribed with the names of the principal landmarks.1 The composition continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 75 verso (D15886; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 73a), but the landmarks visible on this side include Vesuvius and the Sorrentine peninsula, the island of Capri and the curving bay of Naples with the prominent headland of the Castel dell’Ovo jutting into the sea near the centre of the sketch. The ridge of land to the right represents the Posillipo Hill ending at the Scuolo di Virgilio and the island of Nisida.
For a more detailed discussion and further views from Camaldoli see folio 73 (D15871; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 71).

Nicola Moorby
October 2010

1
View from the great Camaldoli above the city of Naples 1816 (British School at Rome Library), reproduced in Tony Cubberley and Luke Herrmann, Twilight of the Grand Tour: A catalogue of the drawings by James Hakewill in the British School at Rome Library, Rome 1992, no.5.42, reproduced p.270.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Part of a View from the Camaldoli Hill, with Vesuvius, the Bay of Naples and Posillipo 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-from-the-camaldoli-hill-with-vesuvius-the-bay-r1138348, accessed 26 April 2024.