It has been suggested in the past that Turner’s Tivoli watercolours do not apparently derive from any specific sketches and were therefore possibly executed on the spot.
1 However, there are, in fact, a large number of related views taken from various points at the end of valley, in the
Tivoli and Rome sketchbook (Tate
D15000–D15005, and
D15092; Turner Bequest 40–42a and 86a), and in the
Tivoli sketchbook (Tate
D15468,
D15488,
D15500–D15502; Turner Bequest CLXXXIII 2, 22, 33–5). A more detailed study of the town from the same viewpoint can also be seen on another page within this sketchbook (see Tate
D16118; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 30). Furthermore, the composition is also similar to that of an early oil painting,
Tivoli and the Roman Campagna circa 1798 (Tate,
N05512),
2 which was itself based upon a version of a picture by the eighteenth-century Welsh artist, Richard Wilson (1713–1782), for example,
Temple of the Sibyl and the Roman Campagna circa 1765–70 (Tate,
T01706). As Cecilia Powell has discussed, there is no evidence that the artist actually painted in the open air during his time in Italy. Several contemporary sources testify that his preference was for drawing on the spot and for colouring indoors away from the motif, since it took up ‘too much time to colour in the open-air’ and ‘he could make 15 or 16 pencil sketches to one colored’.
3 It seems more likely therefore, that the basic outline of the composition was first sketched in pencil, possibly on-the-spot, and that the watercolour was added later from memory.
4