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 Sketches of the Ruins at Herculaneum, Including an Arched Doorway 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sketches of the Ruins at Herculaneum, Including an Arched Doorway’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 81 Recto:
Sketches of the Ruins at Herculaneum, Including an Arched Doorway 1819
D15887
Turner Bequest CLXXXV 79
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘278’ top right, ascending right-hand edge and ‘79’ top left, ascending left-hand edge
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXV 79’ top right, ascending right-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The sketches on this page relate to Turner’s exploration of the archaeological remains at Herculaneum.1 Like all of his studies of the site, the drawings are very rough and appear to have been executed in near-darkness. The details in the top half of the page are too schematic to be identified but clearly visible in the lower half is an arched doorway flanked by pilasters with a staircase beyond.
For a fuller description of Herculaneum and Turner’s on-the-spot sketches see folio 86 (D15896; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 84).
1
See Cecilia Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, p.187, and Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence, New Haven and London 1987, pp.82–3.
Verso:
Blank

Nicola Moorby
November 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Sketches of the Ruins at Herculaneum, Including an Arched Doorway 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 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-sketches-of-the-ruins-at-herculaneum-including-an-arched-r1138358, accessed 10 June 2026.