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 > Rome and Florence Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches of Narni and One of Monte Somma 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Sketches of Narni and One of Monte Somma’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 89 Verso:
Two Sketches of Narni and One of Monte Somma 1819
D16636
Turner Bequest CXCI 89 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 189 x 113 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Narni’ underneath middle sketch and ‘Somma’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The three sketches on this page all represent views pertaining to Turner’s journey between Rome and Florence. In light of the artist’s inscriptions they have been identified by Giovanni Carandente as, from top to bottom, a convent near Narni, a general view of Narni and the Pass of Monte Somma.1 Turner had already passed through all of these locations during the outward journey to Rome through Umbria in the autumn of 1819 and more detailed sketches can be seen in the Ancona to Rome sketchbook (see for example Tate D14737 and D14768; Turner Bequest CLXXVII 43a and 59a).

Nicola Moorby
February 2011

1
Carandente 1968, p.22 note 25.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Two Sketches of Narni and One of Monte Somma 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2011, 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-two-sketches-of-narni-and-one-of-monte-somma-r1138529, accessed 16 July 2025.