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 Quayside at Boffalora sopra Ticino 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Quayside at Boffalora sopra Ticino’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Recto:
Quayside at Boffalora sopra Ticino 1819
D14229
Turner Bequest CLXXIV 44
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 186 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Buff’ bottom centre left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘44’ top right and ‘284’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXIV 44’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s route between Turin and Milan took him through Buffalora sopra Ticino, a village approximately fifteen miles west of Milan which represented the official border between the regions of Piedmont and Lombardy.1 Here he appears to have stayed overnight, or at least tarried long enough to make a significant number of detailed studies of the place, see folio 44 verso (D14228; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 43a). This sketch depicts a view looking north-west from the quayside of the Naviglio Grande, a man-made canal which joins the Ticino river to Milan. Just visible in the centre of the composition is the seventeenth-century bridge over the canal, while looming in the background are the distant mountains of the Alps. Turner has documented the hustle and bustle of activity along the quayside, including a figure who appears to be loading or unloading a narrow barge or canal boat, known as a barchett.
Turner revisited Boffalora on his 1828 tour of Italy and made a very similar sketch from the same spot, see the Rome, Turin and Milan sketchbook (D21685; Turner Bequest CCXXXV 11a).

Nicola Moorby
January 2013

1
For information about the border crossing at Boffalora see Crimi 2007, p.25.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Quayside at Boffalora sopra Ticino 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2013, 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-quayside-at-boffalora-sopra-ticino-r1142750, accessed 25 April 2024.