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 > Route to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscriptions by Turner, Including Notes from Reichard's 'Itinerary of Italy' 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscriptions by Turner, Including Notes from Reichard's 'Itinerary of Italy'’ 1819 (Inside front cover of sketchbook)
Inside front cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Front Cover:
Inscriptions by Turner, Including Notes from Reichard’s ‘Itinerary of Italy’ 1819
D40674
Turner Bequest CLXXI
Pencil and black ink on white wove paper, 114 x 88 mm
Inscribed by the artist (see main catalogue entry),
Inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘CLXXI’ top right, descending right-hand edge
Stamped in black ‘CLXXI’ top right, descending right-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner has used the bottom right-hand corner of this page to make notes on routes and distances between locations for the nineteenth-century traveller in Italy. As John Gage first identified, the information is derived from Reichard’s Itinerary of Italy, published 1818, a copy of which Turner owned (see Tate D36331; Turner Bequest CCCLXVII).1 The inscriptions, which are in black ink read ‘Paris to Milan 622 | Milan to Bologna 233 | Bol to Florence 70 | Florence to Rome by Aqu 176 – 4P9 | 1101’. These notes continue on the opposite sheet, see folio 1 (D13859).
There are also a number of inscriptions in pencil which are now largely too rubbed and faded to be legible. One partially decipherable section includes the text ‘8 [...] The King of Naples [?fate] of | The J. M. [...]’. Cecilia Powell has further transcribed another line as ‘Hulmandel Stone drgs | of Italy’, a reference to C.J. Hullmandel’s book of lithographs, Twenty-four Views of Italy, published in 1818.2

Nicola Moorby
March 2010

1
John Gage, J.M.W. Turner: ‘A Wonderful Range of Mind’, New Haven and London 1987, p.49.
2
Powell 1984, pp.404 and 447 note 69, and Powell 1987, pp.201 note 41 and 206 note 71.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Inscriptions by Turner, Including Notes from Reichard’s ‘Itinerary of Italy’ 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 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-inscriptions-by-turner-including-notes-from-reichards-r1138676, accessed 26 April 2024.