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

Finberg noted the subject established while this ‘colour beginning’ was exhibited in one of the touring Loan Collections selected from the Turner Bequest during the late nineteenth century, calling it ‘Lake Nemi’.1 Turner had visited the volcanic lake, about twenty miles south of Rome, recording it in pencil in his 1819 Vatican Fragments, Albano, Nemi, Rome, and Gandolfo to Naples sketchbooks (Tate; Turner Bequest CLXXX, CLXXXII, CLXXXIV; see Nicola Moorby’s entries in the ‘First Italian Tour 1819–20’ section of this catalogue). Turner was already familiar with the setting, having made a watercolour of the Lake of Nemi (private collection),2 engraved in 1819 for James Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour of Italy (Tate impression: T06023; see Moorby’s 1819–20 Introduction). The composition of the present work is similar to that of an oil study of about 1827–8 also known as Lake Nemi (Tate N03027).3

However, following Eric Shanes’s lead, the consensus is that the scene here is Lake Albano,4 another volcanic lake about twelve miles south-east of Rome, and relates to a finished watercolour of about 1828 (private collection).5 The site is again represented extensively in the 1819 Albano, Nemi, Rome, and Gandolfo to Naples books. Along with many watercolours connected with the ongoing Picturesque Views in England and Wales (see the ‘England and Wales Colour Studies c.1825–39’ and ‘England and Wales c.1826–38’ sections), the design was among three Italian subjects exhibited by Charles Heath at London’s Egyptian Hall in the summer of 1829, apparently intended for a complementary Picturesque Views in Italy project due for publication in 1830, which came to nothing.6 One of the subjects had already appeared in 1828’s Keepsake, and the two others followed in the 1829 edition, this one as Lake Albano (Tate impressions: T04614, T05615; for the project in general, see the Introduction to this section).

Many of Turner’s light-filled Italian compositions show the influence of the Rome-based French painter Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682), whom he greatly admired and often emulated.7 Ian Warrell has observed: ‘Both this study and the finished watercolour were directly influenced by Claude’s Landscape with Castle Gandolfo, which Turner had seen while in Rome in 1819.’8 Shadowy forms in the foreground flanking the radiant sun (reserved as a bright disk of white paper) suggest contre-jour figures, resolved towards the right of the finished design as a couple of picturesque locals conversing with a figure with a portfolio, who may be a travelling print-seller or artist.9

Of the other ‘colour beginnings’ Shanes noted as possible variant studies,10 Tate D25169 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 47) has since been identified as relating to a French Keepsake subject and is catalogued in the present section accordingly, while Tate D25302, D25446 and D36320 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 180, 323, CCCLXV 29) have been placed with other Claude-like works in the ‘Colour Studies’ grouping of ‘Italianate Landscapes and Classical Architecture c.1817–45’, with the last being related to another 1820s watercolour.

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘86’ right of centre, ascending vertically, ‘Probably | cclxiii.324’ towards bottom right, and ‘No 25’ bottom right, upside down.