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 Naples from the Sea, with the Marinella Waterfront 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Naples from the Sea, with the Marinella Waterfront’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Recto:
Naples from the Sea, with the Marinella Waterfront 1819
D15916
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 5
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘5’ top right and ‘245’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVI 5’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Finberg first identified, the sequence of sketches on folios 3 verso–12 (D15913–D15919 and D15922–D15930) represents detailed panoramic views of Naples drawn from the sea, perhaps dating from the outward or return trip to Paestum and the Amalfi coast which Turner undertook during his sojourn in the city.1 Visible in this study is the Marinella waterfront of Naples which lies along the shoreline between the old port and the Carmine castle. The composition continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 4 verso (D15915).
The boat in the centre is a felucca, a wooden sailing vessel with a distinctive lateen or triangular sail. They were a popular mode of transport around the Italian coast and were a particularly common sight in Naples.2 Gillian Forrester has suggested that sketches like these may have informed the inspiration and composition for a later unpublished design for the Liber Studiorum, The Felucca (see Tate D08175; Turner Bequest CXVIII U).3

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.551.
2
See for example an oil study by Thomas Jones (1742–1803), The Bay of Naples and the Mole Lighthouse, 1782 (Tate, T08246).
3
Forrester 1996, p.146.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Naples from the Sea, with the Marinella Waterfront 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-naples-from-the-sea-with-the-marinella-waterfront-r1137842, accessed 13 June 2026.