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 > Turin, Como, Lugarno, Maggiore ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Distant View of Turin, from the East 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant View of Turin, from the East’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Recto:
Distant View of Turin, from the East 1819
D14192
Turner Bequest CLXXIV 24
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 186 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘284’ top right and ‘24’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXIV 24’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains a distant view of Turin from the heights to the east. The River Po bisects the composition near the foreground, while visible near the centre is the dome of the Palazzo Reale and the campanile of the Duomo. The composition looks as though it was originally continued on folio 23 verso (D14189; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 22a). However, Finberg Finberg listed a leaf ‘23’/‘23a’ between folio 23 verso and the present page as ‘Missing’,1 and a blank sheet has been inserted in its place to preserve the integrity of the sketchbook pagination (see introductory Technical notes for a concordance of folio numbers). However, the assumption that there was ever a page at that point may have been an error. For a similar contemporaneous view see a drawing by James Hakewill (1778–1843), Turin from the Road to the Vagine di La Reine (British School at Rome).2
The page is the verso of a drawing exhibited during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see folio 25 verso (D14193; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 24a), and the paper consequently shows signs of over-exposure to light.

Nicola Moorby
December 2012

1
Finberg 1909, p.508.
2
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.2.15, p.131, reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Distant View of Turin, from the East 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-distant-view-of-turin-from-the-east-r1142713, accessed 26 April 2024.