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, Paestum and Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Four Sketches in the ?Gulf of Salerno 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Four Sketches in the ?Gulf of Salerno’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 35 Recto:
Four Sketches in the ?Gulf of Salerno 1819
D15976
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 33
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Cuyp’, ‘Grey’ and ‘Cyp’, ‘Golden’ and ‘yellow | Grey’ within sketch, top right. Also ‘Golden’ underneath middle sketch, and ‘Sea’ within sketch parallel with left-hand edge
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘33’ bottom left, inverted and ‘245’ top left, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVI 33’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These four sketches depict views of a rugged coastal landscape, possibly within the Gulf of Salerno. The studies are rough and swiftly executed but the most interesting details are the colour notes and other inscriptions with which Turner has annotated the scenes. These include the name of the seventeenth-century artist, Aelbert Cuyp (1620–91), known as the ‘Dutch Claude’ because of the golden Italianate quality of the light in his landscape paintings. Turner greatly admired Cuyp’s work and his name intermittently appears in sketchbooks from across his European travels, as well as on a view of Florence from Fiesole in the Rome and Florence sketchbook (Tate D16627; Turner Bequest CXCI 84).1 In 1818, the year before his Italian tour, he had exhibited a painting at the Royal Academy, Dort, or Dordrecht, the Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed (Yale Center for British Art), which was a direct homage to the Dutch master.2 Clearly the yellow colouring and atmospheric conditions which Turner observed at this moment during his exploration of southern Italy brought Cuyp’s work to the forefront of his mind once again.

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

1
See Fred Bachrach ‘Aelbert Cuyp’, in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.69; and Powell 1984, p.27 note 19.
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, no.137.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Four Sketches in the ?Gulf of Salerno 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-four-sketches-in-the-gulf-of-salerno-r1137900, accessed 21 June 2025.