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

As Turner continued his journey north-east, passing through Umbria and crossing the Apennine Mountains, he reached the Marche region. Among the towns he sketched as he approached Ancona on the east coast were Macerata, Recanati, Loreto and Osimo. Holding the sketchbook in different positions, Turner used this page for several rough outlines of hilltop buildings, likely sketched at haste from a moving carriage. As identified by Turner’s accompanying inscription, the town silhouetted at the top of the page is ‘Osimo’. The buildings, towers and ramparts beneath and along the right margin are less clearly defined and more difficult to identify, and Turner’s lower inscription is similarly illegible.

Osimo appears elsewhere in the sketchbook on folios 19 verso–20 recto (D14867–D14868). Turner also sketched this subject during his first major tour of Italy in 1819–20; see Nicola Moorby’s entries in the present catalogue for the Ancona to Rome sketchbook (Tate D14660–D14661, D14663, D14665–D14666; Turner Bequest CLXXVII).

The recto is blank, except for ‘28’ in red ink and ‘CLXXVIII – 28’ stamped in black, both towards bottom right. Finberg’s 1909 Inventory omitted the customary ‘a’ suffix to the folio number to indicate that the present work is the verso, and when Tate accession numbers were allocated, the recto was initially numbered D14881, with this page as D14882; the latter number was subsequently cancelled in favour of the former.