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 View on Lake Como; ?Cernobbio 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View on Lake Como; ?Cernobbio’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 55 Verso:
View on Lake Como; ?Cernobbio 1819
D14249
Turner Bequest CLXXIV 54 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner appears to have made at least two trips on Lake Como during his 1819 tour of Italy. The first of these, as documented by his sketchbook drawings, appears to have been a circular expedition which left the city of Como and followed the western perimeter of the lake by boat as far as Laglio before returning by road along the eastern shore of the western branch.1 This sketch appears to relate to the return leg of that journey and is tentatively identified as a view of Cernobbio on the western shore of the lake. The building with the dome-shaped campanile may be the lakeside church, Chiesa di San Vincenzo. Part of the composition spills over onto the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 56 (D14250; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 55),
For further sketches of Lake Como see folio 48 (D14234; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 47).

Nicola Moorby
January 2013

1
Federico Crimi, ‘J.M.W. Turner e il Verbano: 1819: Torino, Milano e il Sempione’, in Verbanus, no.28, 2007, p.27.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View on Lake Como; ?Cernobbio 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-view-on-lake-como-cernobbio-r1142770, accessed 24 April 2024.