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 Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling to Italy 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling to Italy’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Recto:
Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling to Italy 1819
D13861
Turner Bequest CLXXI 2
Black ink on white wove paper, 88 x 114 mm
Inscribed by James Hakewill (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘2’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXI 2’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains advice to Turner on travelling to Italy from France and Switzerland, in preparation for the artist’s first Italian tour of 1819. The author of the inscription is James Hakewill (1778–1843), with whom Turner collaborated on the engraved print project, Picturesque Tour of Italy, published 1820 (see the introduction to the sketchbook). The text was first transcribed by Finberg,1 and is repeated here with only minor variations:
After leaving Dijon enter the Jura | Mountains at Poligny – good Inn. | continue to Morez. good Inn – | Geneva – . Eau de Genéve. good – | Best view of Geneva, said to be from | Secheron – . | In the Route of the Simplon, when at | Martigny you are at the nearest point | to Chamouny & Mont Blanc.
Hakewill had himself travelled to Italy via this route in 1816–17, and views of Dijon, the Jura Mountains, Poligny, Morez, Geneva and the Route of the Simplon can all be found amidst his drawings from this time (British School at Rome Library).2 Despite the suggested itinerary however, Turner ultimately chose to enter Italy via the Pass of Mont Cenis, although he did make a detour back into the Alps in order to see the newly built Simplon Pass.3 Hakewill’s notes continue on folio 3 (D13863).

Nicola Moorby
March 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.496.
2
See 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, nos.1.16–1.36, pp.80–110, reproduced.
3
This has been by confirmed by Federico Crimi, ‘Turner e il Verbano. Sulle vedute del Porta di Arona e dell’Isola Bella’, Verbanus, no.27, 2006, pp.177–202.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling to 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-notes-by-james-hakewill-on-travelling-to-italy-r1138679, accessed 24 April 2024.