Lake Albano was a popular subject for artists during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and Turner would have been particularly familiar with representations of it by John Robert Cozens (1752–1797) whose watercolours he had studied in his youth.
3 It also appears as one of the notational pen-and-ink sketches after John ‘Warwick’ Smith (1749–1831) which Turner copied into the
Italian Guide Book sketchbook prior to embarking on his first trip to Italy (see Tate
D13968; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 20, third from top right). During his 1819 travels he made two sequences of swift outline studies recording the topography of the lake, particularly focusing on the distinctive outline of Castel Gandolfo on the western shore, see folios 4–5 (
D15561–D15563), and also the
Albano, Nemi, Rome sketchbook (Tate
D15302–D15311,
D15313–D15321,
D15322–D15325; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 4–9, 10–15 and 16–17). These drawings later formed the basis for a large watercolour composition
Lake Albano circa 1828 (private collection), commissioned for Charles Heath’s unrealised scheme for
Picturesque Views in Italy but ultimately engraved for publication in
The Keepsake 1829.
4 Cecilia Powell has pointed out that Turner’s watercolour closely recalls a painting by Claude of the same subject,
Pastoral Landscape with a View of Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo, 1639 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), a work which he viewed in the Barberini collection in Rome and made notes on in the
Remarks (Italy) sketchbook (see Tate
D16848 and
D16869–70; Turner Bequest CXCIII 80 and CXCIII 95a–6).
5