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 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The River Marecchia at Rimini, with the Bridge of Augustus or Tiberius beyond Moored Sailing Boats 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Marecchia at Rimini, with the Bridge of Augustus or Tiberius beyond Moored Sailing Boats’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 58 Recto:
The River Marecchia at Rimini, with the Bridge of Augustus or Tiberius beyond Moored Sailing Boats 1819
D14593
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 54
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘54’ bottom right (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 54’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated correctly Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Bridge with town’) as ‘Rimini’. He crossed out Finberg’s curly bracket (usually an indication of a continuous view) linking this page with folio 57 verso opposite (D14592; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 53a), under which other Rimini drawings are noted;1 the two drawings are indeed separate, albeit showing different aspects of the same bridge. The other view focuses on the bridge itself, while here it is placed in a wider pictorial context with its horizontals offset by the verticals of a cluster of masts. Looking south-west, a similar prospect can today be obtained from the Ponte dei Mille, including the campanile of the church of Santa Maria in Corte on the Corso d’Augusto left of the bridge.
Powell has characterised the site as one of those that Turner came across simply by following the major routes through Italy and thus ‘did not have to go out of his way’ to garner a useful store of incidental subjects.2 She has commented on the relatively uneventful phase of Turner’s journey between leaving Bologna and reaching Rimini (folios 43 recto–60 verso; D14566–D14598; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 39a–56a);3 for his overall route south-east between Bologna and Ancona, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.518.
2
See Powell 1984, p.90; see also Powell 1987, p.24.
3
See Powell 1984, pp.89–90, 465 note 98.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The River Marecchia at Rimini, with the Bridge of Augustus or Tiberius beyond Moored Sailing Boats 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-river-marecchia-at-rimini-with-the-bridge-of-augustus-or-r1186329, accessed 18 September 2025.