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 Sketches by Turner of a Figure and a View of a Bay; and Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sketches by Turner of a Figure and a View of a Bay; and Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Verso:
Sketches by Turner of a Figure and a View of a Bay; and Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819
D13886
Turner Bequest CLXXI 15 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 88 x 114 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Borgetto’ top right, ‘Sea’ left of sketch, and ‘[?Me...]’ bottom right
Inscribed by James Hakewill in black ink (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains a message to Turner from James Hakewill (1778–1843), who filled this sketchbook with advice on travelling in Italy (see the introduction to the sketchbook). The text was first transcribed by Finberg,1 and is repeated here with minor variations:
Buy for me, a head of the pope in | imitation of a gem. and the | paste of it to take impressions from | probably 2/6 will purchase both.
The comments represent a request to buy a souvenir in Rome, see also folio 13 verso (D13882).
In addition to Hakewill’s inscription, Turner has also used this page for two on-the-spot pencil drawings. In the top right-hand corner is a study of the back of a seated woman. Turner’s annotated note suggests that it was drawn at Borghetto, a village on the Via Flaminia between Otricoli and Civita Castellana, see the Ancona to Rome sketchbook (Tate D14795; Turner Bequest CLXXVII 73). At the bottom of the sheet, meanwhile is a sketch of a landscape. The view is currently unidentified, but it appears to depict a tower within a bay, with hills in the background.

Nicola Moorby
March 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.497.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Sketches by Turner of a Figure and a View of a Bay; and 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-sketches-by-turner-of-a-figure-and-a-view-of-a-bay-and-notes-r1138704, accessed 23 April 2024.