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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Second Italian Tour 1828-9 > Marseilles to Genoa Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Oneglia, from the East 1828

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Oneglia, from the East’ 1828
Folio 28 Recto:
Oneglia, from the East 1828
D21186
Turner Bequest CCXXXI 28
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 174 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Omeliga’ centre right
Inscribed in red ink ‘28’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXI 28’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Turner’s misspelt inscription suggests, this sketch depicts Oneglia, a town on the Ligurian coast, approximately twenty-five miles east of the border with France.1 As the geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot first confirmed, the drawing, with the page turned horizontally, records the view from a location to the east of Oneglia looking west along the shoreline with Porto Maurizio visible in the distance on the far left.2 Both towns are now part of present-day Imperia. The topographical profile of Oneglia is dominated by the Collegiata di San Giovanni Battista, on the right, and the onion-topped campanile of the Chiesa di Nostra Signora di Loreto in Borgo Peri, near the waterfront in the centre.
For further views of Oneglia and Porto Maurizio see folio 44 verso (D21218).
1
Finberg 1909, p,709.
2
Roland Courtot, ‘Les Carnets de William Turner: Recherches d’identification et de localisation des dessins’, unpublished research notes, Université de Provence à Aix, April 2008, p.5, as ‘Oneglia’ (shared with former Tate cataloguer Nicola Moorby in email correspondence at that date).
Verso:
Blank

Nicola Moorby
March 2017

Revised by Hannah Kaspar
November 2024

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Oneglia, from the East 1828’, catalogue entry, March 2017, revised by Hannah Kaspar, November 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2025, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/oneglia-from-the-east-r1209864, accessed 26 June 2025.