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

One of the famous vantage points for panoramic vistas of Naples was Capodimonte (the Italian literally translates as ‘Head of the Mountain’), a hill to the north of the city dominated by an eighteenth-century royal palace (the Reggia or Palazzo di Capodimonte), built for the Bourbon King, Charles III. This study depicts the view from the edge of the park surrounding the palace (the Bosco or Parco di Capodimonte) looking south towards distant Capri and the Sorrentine peninsula. Turner has meticulously recorded the topography of the cityscape spread out before him, from the lighthouse of the Mole on the left, to the hill rising on the right, with the fortress of Castel Sant’Elmo and the Certosa (Charterhouse) of San Martino. Visible as a diagonal thoroughfare across the centre of the composition is the Ponte della Sanità viaduct and the new road built at the beginning of the nineteenth century which connects the lower city with Capodimonte (present-day Corso Amedeo di Savoia). Further sketches from Capodimonte can be also be found within this sketchbook, see the verso of the present leaf and folio 23 (D41406, D16111), as well as in the Gandolfo to Naples sketchbook (Tate D15691–D15692; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 66a–67). As a young man, Turner made a copy with Thomas Girtin of a related prospect by another artist (see Tate D36536; Turner Bequest CCCLXXV 15). He was probably also familiar with a similar view by James Hakewill (1778–1843), dating from the Hakewill’s travels in Italy during 1816–17.1

Unlike the artist’s limpid and evocative Neapolitan watercolours, this detailed pencil composition contains no suggestion of atmospheric effects and is concerned with an accurate description of place. John Ruskin described it as an example of ‘Turner’s fixed manner of sketching throughout life – the utmost possible quantity of information put into the smallest possible space, but always arranged for a perfect picture’.2 He found the study analogous to ‘a map of the scene giving the solid forms instead of the flat spaces; there is no more effort to make you fancy yourself at the place than if he were making a geometrical survey of an estate’.3 He commissioned the artist, William Ward (1829–1908), to make a copy of the drawing for the Ruskin Cabinet at Whitelands College, Chelsea (now part of the Roehampton Institute).4 Ward originally worked in pencil but Ruskin instructed him to reinforce many of the lines in pen and ink, in order to reveal the full complexity of the scene.5

There is another drawing, not recorded by Finberg, on the verso (D41406).