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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Trieste, Graz and Danube Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Trieste Harbour, with the Lighthouse and the Gulf Coast Beyond; Mountains ?near Graz 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Trieste Harbour, with the Lighthouse and the Gulf Coast Beyond; Mountains ?near Graz’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 64 Recto:
Trieste Harbour, with the Lighthouse and the Gulf Coast Beyond; Mountains ?near Graz 1840
D30123
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 64
Pencil on cream wove paper, 127 x 198 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[...] G[...] Graz’ towards top right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘64’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXCIX – 64’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the main view is north-east from the south end Trieste’s harbour, across the gulf to the rugged coastline. The building on the left is in the old lazaretto area, since much altered; allowing for the slightness of the sketch, it may represent the south-east façade of the present Museo del Mare. The lighthouse, operational from 1833, still stands on its castellated base at the southern end of the harbour, but was superseded in the 1920s by the monumental Faro della Vittoria, north of the city.1 This is one of a sequence of views in and around the Adriatic port, made working inwards from the back of this sketchbook; see under folio 57 recto (D30109).2
Above is a rapid and somewhat shaky drawing of the ‘carriage sketch’ type, annotated with a few words. As Cecilia Powell has implied, the last may be ‘Graz’,3 referring to Turner’s next major stopping point (see under folio 41 verso; D30079) after passing through present-day Slovenia on his route inland north-east towards Vienna.
1
See ‘Fanale – Lanterna’, Istria on the Internet, accessed 23 April 2018, http://www.istrianet.org/istria//architecture/lighthouses/trieste-lanterna.htm.
2
See also Powell 1995, pp.66, 81 note 18.
3
See ibid., p.240.
Technical notes:
There is staining at the top centre from the leather pencil loop secured under the rear paste-down (D30129; Turner Bequest CCXCIX 67).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Trieste Harbour, with the Lighthouse and the Gulf Coast Beyond; Mountains ?near Graz 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-trieste-harbour-with-the-lighthouse-and-the-gulf-coast-r1196973, accessed 24 April 2024.