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 > Ancona to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Buildings and a Bridge, ?Terni 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Buildings and a Bridge, ?Terni’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 57 Verso:
Buildings and a Bridge, ?Terni 1819
D14764
Turner Bequest CLXXVII 57 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this sketch is currently unidentified although the bridge and the buildings may relate to Terni, an Umbrian town approximately eighteen miles south of Spoleto, famous for the nearby Cascata or Caduta delle Marmore, also known as the Falls of Terni. The town was transformed into a major industrial centre during the second half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, around eighty per cent of the town was destroyed by Allied bombing during the Second World War.1 Consequently few of the buildings seen by Turner in 1819 still exist today. The view continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 58 (D14765).

Nicola Moorby
November 2008

1
Ros Belford, Martin Dunford, Celia Woolfrey et al, Rough Guide to Italy, New York, London and Delhi 2007, 8th edition, p.669.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Buildings and a Bridge, ?Terni 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2008, 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-buildings-and-a-bridge-terni-r1138927, accessed 11 May 2025.