J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Italy c.1828-43 > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Italian View, with Trees and Ruined Temple c.1828-43

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Italian View, with Trees and Ruined Temple’ c.1828-43
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
?Italian View, with Trees and Ruined Temple c.1828–43
D36088
Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 242
Gouache and watercolour on brown wove paper, 101 x 184 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘242’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLXIV – 242’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject is unidentified, but the silhouetted pine and the vault or dome, presumably of a substantial ruined classical structure, suggest Italy; see the Introduction to this section for further brief discussion and dating. Pending further research, the subject could equally be the result of observation, recollection or imagination.
It has something of the air of the Liber Studiorum subject The Temple of Minerva Medica (otherwise ‘Hindoo Devotions’ or ‘The Hindoo Worshipper’), which Turner worked on in about 1808, over a decade before his first visit to Rome; see the entry for the watercolour study Tate D08128 (Turner Bequest CXVII A). His 1819 views of the temple include twilit watercolours in the Rome: Colour Studies sketchbook (Tate D16362, D16363; Turner Bequest CLXXXIX 35, 36), but the use of brown paper here suggests a date from the late 1820s onwards, when the artist made extensive use of small sheets of coloured papers. There may be a connection with his extended stay in Rome in 1828–9.
Technical notes:
There is some rubbing to the surface pigments at the edges where the work was formerly set within a window mount.
Verso:
Blank; laid down.

Matthew Imms
February 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?Italian View, with Trees and Ruined Temple c.1828–43 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-italian-view-with-trees-and-ruined-temple-r1183043, accessed 23 April 2024.