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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Naples: Rome. C. Studies Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bay of Naples from Capodimonte 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bay of Naples from Capodimonte’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Verso:
Bay of Naples from Capodimonte 1819
D41406
Pencil on white wove paper, 255 x 403 mm
Inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘CLXXXVII . 22’ top right, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVII 22’ and Turner Bequest monogram top right, inverted
This panoramic view represents the Bay of Naples seen from Capodimonte, a hill to the north of the city dominated by an eighteenth-century royal palace (the Reggia di Capodimonte), built for the Bourbon King, Charles III. Turner has depicted the 180-degree vista from Vesuvius in the east (left) to the hill rising in the west (right), topped by the fortress of Castel Sant’Elmo and the Certosa (Charterhouse) of San Martino. The rest of the city is briefly indicated in the centre with the island of Capri and the Sorrentine peninsula silhouetted against the horizon.
Further sketches of the city from Capodimonte can be seen on the recto and on folio 23 (D16110, D16111).
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Technical notes:
This drawing, not recorded by Finberg.1 Allowing for pages detached from the Naples, Rome C. Studies sketchbook, the leaf was perhaps originally folio 22 (see the concordance in the introduction).

Nicola Moorby
May 2010

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.556.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Bay of Naples from Capodimonte 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-bay-of-naples-from-capodimonte-r1132370, accessed 23 April 2024.