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

These artists were identified by John Gage as follows2:

The common link between this cosmopolitan list of European artists in Rome is that they are all primarily known for their work in landscape. Many of the French and German painters in particular identified themselves with the tradition of Italianate landscape inherited from Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain and, like Turner, were associated with innovative approaches to the genre such as the historical treatment of landscape, the move towards empirical naturalism, and painting in the open air.3 John Gage has suggested that Turner comprised his list with the assistance of his friend and fellow painter, Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), who was living in Rome at that time.4 Although it is not documented that two men socialised during this period it seems very likely. The Piazza Mignanelli address of Eastlake’s friends, Captain and Mrs Graham appears in the Vatican Fragments sketchbook (Tate D15250; Turner Bequest CLXXX 81a), and Eastlake also rented a studio in the same building. Turner would later share these rooms with him during his second stay in the city in 1828. However, he could equally have been made aware of his artistic contemporaries by another of the British painters in Rome such as Thomas Lawrence, or even Antonio Canova, President of the Roman Academy of St Luke’s, to which Turner was elected an honorary member at the same time as Josef Rebell, one of the names on his list.5

It is likely that Turner may have visited the studios of some or all of the named artists, or seen their work exhibited in Rome.6 However, there are no surviving records, notes or sketches to document this and art historians have debated the extent to which he may have been influenced by, or appreciated connections with, these contemporaneous landscapists. Gage has discussed how Turner would have been attracted by the public recognition afforded to their efforts to elevate the status of landscape painting, despite the obvious stylistic differences between his work and theirs.7 Andrew Wilton has argued that many of the German and French painters were part of a younger movement attempting to imitate the colour and purity of Raphael and Dürer, which in turn may be reflected within the lucidity and freshness of Turner’s 1819 Italian watercolours.8 Cecilia Powell, meanwhile, has suggested that his use of watercolour on paper prepared with a grey wash, evident, for example, in the Rome C. Studies sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CLXXXIX), may owe something to the example of Rebell, Bouguet and Reinhart, all of whom were noted for their topographical studies on grey paper.9

Turner inscribed a different list of artists, with occasional comments on their work, in his copy of the travel guidebook, Reichards Italy, published 1818 (Tate; Turner Bequest CCCLXVII, final page and inside back cover).10