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 > Route to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 37 Verso:
Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819
D13931
Turner Bequest CLXXI 37 a
Traces of pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 88 mm
Inscribed by James Hakewill in black ink (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This inscription represents part of a suggested itinerary for travelling in Italy in preparation for Turner’s first Italian tour of 1819. The author is James Hakewill (1778–1843), with whom Turner collaborated on the engraved print project, Picturesque Tour of Italy, published 1820 (see the introduction to the sketchbook). The text was first transcribed by Finberg,1 and is repeated here with minor variations:
From Genoa by land to Rapallo, | Spezia, Sargana & Pisa – | From Pisa to Lucca and | Florence – From Florence | by Perugia to Rome. Rome | to Naples. Excursion from | Rome to Albano and cross | from Albano to Frascati by | Marino &c. to Tivoli and | back to Rome. Return to | Florence by the Sienna | Road – From Florence
The text follows on from folio 38 verso (D13933) and continues on folio 36 verso (D13929). The content is repeated to some extent on folios 8–16 and 19 (D13873–D13887 and D13893).
Hakewill had undertaken a tour of Italy in 1816–17 and the route recommended here to Rome via Genoa and Florence was the one which he had followed then.2 Turner, however, ultimately chose a different course, travelling to Rome via Venice and the Adriatic coast, and only reaching Florence on the homeward leg of the journey. He did not visit Genoa until his second tour of Italy in 1828, see folio 8 (D13873).

Nicola Moorby
March 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.499.
2
See Tony Cubberley and Luke Herrmann, Twilight of the Grand Tour: A Catalogue of the drawings by James Hakewill in the British School at Rome Library, Rome 1992, pp.10–11.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 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-notes-by-james-hakewill-on-travelling-in-italy-r1138747, accessed 27 April 2024.