Catalogue entry
Turner’s authorship of this drawing has been doubted. It has been identified as the sketch that Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838) supplied to the artist as a basis for the oil painting of the subject that Turner executed about 1798 (Tate
N00463).
1 But it seems, in fact, to be by Turner himself, after a sketch by Colt Hoare. John Gage suggests that the subject was intended as a substitute for Wilson’s
Lake Nemi, which Colt Hoare had acquired thinking that it represented Avernus.
2 In the event, Turner’s picture did not enter Colt Hoare’s collection, and as Kathleen Nicholson points out,
3 there is no direct evidence that it was executed as the result of a commission.
Finberg records that this sheet was numbered 463 in the original series of Turner Bequest drawings displayed by the National Gallery, and ‘now [i.e. 1909] on loan to Stockport Museum’.
4 However, the drawing does not appear in any of John Ruskin’s notes on selections from the Turner Bequest;
5 and Finberg gives the same number to Turner’s sepia drawing for the
Bridge and Goats plate in the
Liber Studiorum (Tate
D08146; Turner Bequest CXVII R). It seems unlikely that the present subject would have been selected for exhibition, as it is uncharacteristic and somewhat clumsy, betraying its origin as a copy from an amateur drawing.
The sheet has been folded vertically down the centre.
Blank; not stamped (formerly laid down)
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