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

The southernmost destination on Turner’s tour of Italy in 1819–20 was Paestum, an ancient city on the Tyrrhenian coast, approximately twenty miles south-east of Salerno. Here, like many British tourists, the artist visited the three famous fifth-century BC Greek Doric temples which stand on a plain between the mountains and the sea. Rediscovered in the mid-eighteenth century, the remains represented some of the most well preserved and complete temples in Europe, and according to Revd John Chetwode Eustace in A Classical Tour Through Italy (first published 1813), surpassed those in every other Italian city except Rome.1 Turner was already familiar with the appearance of the ruins through the work of other artists including Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778),2 John Robert Cozens (1752–1797),3 John ‘Warwick’ Smith (1749–1831),4 and James Hakewill (1778–1843).5 Furthermore he had used an illustrated diagram featuring the so-called Temple of Neptune in his perspective lectures at the Royal Academy (see Tate D17072; Turner Bequest CXCV 102). Having made the journey from Naples to Paestum for himself he eagerly seized the opportunity to make a number of on-the-spot sketches, exploring the site from a variety of angles, see folios 20, 31–33 verso, 44 verso–45 verso (D15946, D15968–D15973, D15995–D15997; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 19b, 29–31a, 42a–43a).

As Cecilia Powell first specifically identified, this sketch depicts a view of the Temple of Hera, formerly but mistakenly known as the Basilica.6 Within the study Turner has indicated that there are ‘18’ Doric columns along the lateral side of the structure, a fact which he had already recorded in his notes from Eustace in the Italian Guide Book sketchbook (see Tate D13958; Turner Bequest CLXXII 14a). The artist’s viewpoint appears to be just inside the south-west corner of the Temple of Hera, with the three surviving columns of the naos or cella (inner chamber) in the centre of the right-hand side, and the pronaos, or inner portico beyond. The left-hand side of the composition also includes the front and side of the adjacent Second Temple of Hera (formerly known as the Temple of Neptune or Poseidon), a sweeping view of about 120 degrees. Powell has suggested that this approach reflects Turner’s knowledge of the dramatic interior views of the temples by Piranesi which he would have seen in the collection of his friend, Sir John Soane.7

The temples at Paestum formed the subject for one of Turner’s vignette illustrations for Rogers’s Italy (published 1830). The composition, however, appears to bear no relation to any of the on-the-spot sketches and is derived entirely from imagination and memory.8 For a more detailed discussion see the entry for the watercolour vignette (Tate D27665; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 148). Turner made a related design for the Little Liber (see Tate D36070; Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 224),9 and Powell has also suggested that there may be a visual reference to Paestum in the temples seen in the background of the later finished oil painting, Story of Apollo and Daphne, exhibited 1837 (Tate, N00520).10