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 the Church of San Paolo at Albano 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of the Church of San Paolo at Albano’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Verso:
View of the Church of San Paolo at Albano 1819
D15344
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 26 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Wilson’ centre right of sketch, above buildings
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this sketch is the campanile of the Church of San Paolo in Albano seen from the grounds of the convent of the Cappuccini. The clock on the tower appears to show that the time is approaching 1pm. Turner’s viewpoint is the same as that in folio 1 verso (D15297). The viewpoint also mirrors that of a watercolour by Richard Colt Hoare, View of Albano 1787 (Thomas Ashby Collection, Vatican Library) 1 and in a coloured aquatint by John Izard Middleton published in Grecian Remains in Italy: A Description of Cyclopian Walls and of Roman Antiquities, with Topographical and Picturesque Views of Ancient Latium, London 1812.2.
Despite Turner’s eagerness to find evidence of Claude Lorrain in the Italian landscape, the artist uppermost in his mind when exploring the Alban Hills seems to have been the Welsh landscape painter Richard Wilson (1713–1782). Turner inscribed his name several times in this sketchbook, see folios 15 verso, 28 verso and 58 verso (D15322, D15348 and D15407; Turner Bequest 57a).
The far right-hand side contains part of the sketch from the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 27 (D15345).

Nicola Moorby
May 2008

1
Reproduced in colour in Raymond Keaveney, Views of Rome from the Thomas Ashby Collection in the Vatican Library, exhibition catalogue, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1988, p.279.
2
Reproduced Charles R. Mack and Lyn Robertson (ed), The Roman Remains: John Izard Middleton’s Visual Souvenirs of 1820–1823 with Additional Views in Italy, France and Switzerland, South Carolina 1997, p.21. See also a drawing of a similar view by Charles Joseph Lecointe, see Francesco Petrucci e Susanna Marra, Vedute dei Colli Albani e di Roma dall’album di viaggio di Charles Joseph Lecointe (1824–1886), exhibition catalogue, Palazzo Chigi, Ariccia 2006, no.16, p.34, reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of the Church of San Paolo at Albano 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-the-church-of-san-paolo-at-albano-r1132639, accessed 25 April 2024.