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

This topographical panorama depicts the Riviera di Levante, the stretch of Ligurian coastline linking Genoa and La Spezia. Buildings are visible to the far right, and a small village is nestled at the foot of the slopes. The geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has pinpointed Turner’s viewpoint near Ruta, along the road to Rapallo. Looking north-west, presumably from a high coastal road, he sketched the fishing village of Camogli, with Genoa in the distance.1

This is an unusually detailed topographical study for the present sketchbook, when compared to the cursory outlines of other Ligurian landscapes; see, for example, the recto (D21466). It seems Turner composed this view at a more leisurely pace, perhaps taking advantage of a pause in his journey. Patches of foliage are carefully indicated with hatching and cross-hatching, and individual trees are delineated in the foreground.