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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Distant View of Ruins amidst the Mountains, ?near Tivoli 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 71 Recto:
Distant View of Ruins amidst the Mountains, ?near Tivoli 1819
D15104
Turner Bequest CLXXIX 92 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch appears to depict a distant view of ruins amidst mountains. The subject is currently unidentified although it may depict one of the many Roman villas found in the vicinity of Tivoli such as the so-called Villa of Brutus, the Villa of Ventidio Basso, the Villa of Cassius or the Villa of Quintilio Varus. The bottom right-hand corner of the page also contains a small part of the drawing from the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 70 verso (D15059; Turner Bequest CLXXIX 70a).
At some point during the nineteenth-century survey of Turner’s sketchbooks this page missed being numbered and its original position was lost. Finberg was forced to place it at the end of his catalogue for this sketchbook and the leaves were rebound in an incorrect order. By reuniting the respective halves of the sketches on the recto and verso the sheet was eventually returned to its correct place but this led to Finberg’s numbering being out of step with the present arrangement, see the introduction to the sketchbook.

Nicola Moorby
February 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Distant View of Ruins amidst the Mountains, ?near Tivoli 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2010, 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-distant-view-of-ruins-amidst-the-mountains-near-tivoli-r1137694, accessed 20 September 2024.