Joseph Mallord William Turner

Genoa Harbour with the Lighthouse

c.1828–37

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Medium: Chalk and graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 143 x 191 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D33755
Turner Bequest CCCXLI 76

Catalogue entry

The subjects of this drawing, Tate D33718, D33719 and D33720 (Turner Bequest CCCXLI 39, 40, 41) are related, as Finberg noted, although his reading of Turner’s largely illegible inscription here as ‘Boromeo’ and his suggestion of the inland Borromean Islands on Lake Maggiore 1 was perhaps over-speculative, as the subject of all four sketches appears to be Genoa,2 on the Mediterranean coast; see under D33718 for comparable view and notes on dating.

See also the successively numbered harbour scene, Tate D33756 (Turner Bequest CCCXLI 77), which might also be Genoa.

See Finberg 1909, II, p.1068.

See also undated MS note ‘Genoa’ by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.II, opposite p.1068.

Verso:

Blank; inscribed by John Ruskin in pencil ‘234 | O’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
February 2016

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