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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Landscape near Rome with Ponte Molle in Distance 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 37 Recto:
Landscape near Rome with Ponte Molle in Distance 1819
D16218
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 36
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘36’ bottom right (very faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVIII 36’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts the countryside on the northern outskirts of Rome. Turner’s viewpoint is from the east at a point near the Fontana dell’Acqua Acetosa, with the plain of the River Tiber stretching out before him and the heights of Monte Mario beyond. The bridge visible on the right in the mid-distance is the Ponte Molle, see folio 36 (D16217; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 35).
Turner worked up a similar landscape composition to this view in watercolour in the Naples: Rome C. Studies sketchbook (see Tate D16133; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 45). The building on the far left-hand side of the sketch is probably the same one which appears on the right-hand side of the watercolour.

Nicola Moorby
September 2008

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Landscape near Rome with Ponte Molle in Distance 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 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-landscape-near-rome-with-ponte-molle-in-distance-r1139730, accessed 28 March 2024.