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, with the Gulf and Lighthouse; an Urban Skyline, Probably at Vienna 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Trieste, with the Gulf and Lighthouse; an Urban Skyline, Probably at Vienna’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Recto:
Trieste, with the Gulf and Lighthouse; an Urban Skyline, Probably at Vienna 1840
D30004
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 2
Pencil on cream wove paper, 127 x 198 mm
Partial watermark ‘atman’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘V[...]’ centre right, descending vertically
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘2’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXCIX – 2’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (Town beside river), crossing out the last word and adding: ‘sea Trieste’.1 The sketches made with the page turned horizontally are somewhat fragmentary, but appear to include views of Trieste, overlooking the bay to its west, and a detail of the 1833 lighthouse on its harbour mole;2 for other views, see under folio 57 recto (D30109).
At right-angles at the bottom right is an unrelated thumbnail view of distant domes and spires, inscribed ‘V[...]’ and likely showing Vienna;3 see under folio 40 recto (D30076).
1
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.967; see also Powell 1995, p.242.
2
See ‘Fanale – Lanterna’, Istria on the Internet, accessed 23 April 2018, http://www.istrianet.org/istria//architecture/lighthouses/trieste-lanterna.htm.
3
See Powell 1995, p.242.
Technical notes:
There is staining towards the bottom left and right from the leather pencil loops secured under the front paste-down (D41222).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Trieste, with the Gulf and Lighthouse; an Urban Skyline, Probably at Vienna 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-with-the-gulf-and-lighthouse-an-urban-skyline-r1196854, accessed 23 April 2024.