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 > Ancona to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Buildings in the Apennine Mountains; ?Pale, near Foligno 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Buildings in the Apennine Mountains; ?Pale, near Foligno’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Recto:
Buildings in the Apennine Mountains; ?Pale, near Foligno 1819
D14712
Turner Bequest CLXXVII 31
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 186 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘oli’ and ‘Road’ centre of sketch
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘31’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVII 31’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch represents a view amidst the Apennines on the descent towards Foligno after Colfiorito. The subject is not conclusively identified but it may depict the village of Pale and the Cascata (waterfall) del Menotre. During the nineteenth century, the area was famous for its paper mills, including one at Pale. Eustace provides a description of the location in A Classical Tour Through Italy:
At the village situate in the dell below amidst woods and rocks, the river pent up between the closing crag, works its way through several little chasms, and tumbles in seven or eight cascades down the steep through tufts of box and ilex, amidst houses and fragments of rocks intermingled, into the plain below, where turning two or three mills as it passes, it hurries along to join the neighbouring Clitumnus.1
The same buildings can be seen on folios 30 verso (D14711) and 33 (D14716).

Nicola Moorby
November 2008

1
John Chetwode Eustace, A Classical Tour Through Italy, London 1815, vol.I, pp.316.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Buildings in the Apennine Mountains; ?Pale, near Foligno 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2008, 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-buildings-in-the-apennine-mountains-pale-near-foligno-r1138875, accessed 22 September 2024.