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 > Albano, Nemi, Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View of Genzano and Lake Nemi 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of Genzano and Lake Nemi’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Verso:
View of Genzano and Lake Nemi 1819
D15340
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 24 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Road’ centre and ‘Chesnut’ within tree bottom left of sketch
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of this sketch as Genzano, one of the ‘Castelli Romani’, sixteen communes within the Alban Hills, situated on the high western shore above Lake Nemi.1 Turner’s viewpoint is a spot to the south-east of the town looking up towards the church and bell-tower of Santa Maria della Cima with the tree-lined road leading towards Ariccia in the background. A corner of the Palazzo Sforza Cesarini is just visible at the right-hand edge of the town. The town was badly damaged by bombing during the Second World War and apart from the surviving church and palace, the prospect today looks very different. The chestnut trees which Turner makes a point of annotating are a characteristic feature of the countryside in this part of Italy.
The panorama continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 25 (D15341). For a general discussion of Turner’s view of Lake Nemi see folio 19 (D15329).

Nicola Moorby
May 2008

1
Powell 1984, p.422.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of Genzano and Lake Nemi 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2008, 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-view-of-genzano-and-lake-nemi-r1132635, accessed 25 April 2024.