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

By the nineteenth century, exploration of the city’s environs had become as much part of the Roman experience as its architecture and monuments, and Turner made a large number of studies of the landscape north of the city. Many of the views within this sketchbook appear to relate to a single perambulation from Sant’Agnese fuori le mura to Ponte Sant’Angelo, by way of the Ponte Molle (for further information see the sketchbook introduction). The subject of this sketch is the view looking east from near to the Ponte Molle bridge. The River Tiber stretches across the centre of the composition and snakes its way towards the distant range of mountains. Beside the bank on the far left-hand side is the Torre Lazzaroni, a medieval tower erected over the remains of a Roman tomb.1 This area of the Roman Campagna was characterised by a number of such towers built for the protection of the city by Leo IV (Pope, 847–855 AD).2 A further example, possibly the Tor di Quinto, can be seen further in the distance, near the centre of the horizon. Sketches of a similar but more panoramic prospect can be found on folio 46 (D16466; CXC 51), and in the Naples: Rome C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16136 and D16137; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 48 and 49). Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the Torre Lazzaroni with the Ponte Molle can also be seen in the St Peter’s sketchbook (see D16220; CLXXXVIII 37). Like many drawings within this sketchbook, the composition has been executed over a washed grey background and Turner has created areas of pale highlights by lifting or rubbing through to the white paper beneath.

Turner’s forays into the Campagna followed a long artistic tradition established during the seventeenth century by Claude Lorrain (circa 1600–82) and Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). The two French masters had famously made a number of sketching trips along the banks of the Tiber north of the city; indeed the countryside between the Porta del Popolo and the Ponte Molle had popularly become known as the ‘Promenade de Poussin’.3 In particular, Turner may have been reminded of the paintings of Claude. A cylindrical building similar to the tower within this sketch appears in The Mill on the Tiber, 1650 (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City) and The Mill, or the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, 1648 (National Gallery, London). The latter was one of two paintings by the French painter which Turner requested should be hung in perpetuity next to his own Sun rising through Vapour and Dido building Carthage.4

Verso:
Blank except for traces of grey watercolour
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘774’ bottom left and by an unknown hand in pencil ‘CXC’ bottom right