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 > Naples, Paestum and Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Near Santa Maria dei Monti, Naples 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Near Santa Maria dei Monti, Naples’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 27 Verso:
?Near Santa Maria dei Monti, Naples 1819
D15961
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 25 c
Pencil on white wove paper, approximately 65 x 113 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This rugged landscape with its Stone (or Umbrella) pine trees and various buildings along the brow of the hill is highly reminiscent of a number of views by Thomas Jones (1742–1803) and Francis Towne (1739–1816) painted on the road to the Neapolitan monastery of Santa Maria dei Monti in 1781.1 This church can be found at the top of a winding road (present-day Via Santa Maria ai Monti) between Capodimonte and Capodichino to the north-east of the city. Compare for example Jones’s watercolour, In the Road to Santa Maria dei Monti, near Naples: Morning 1781 (Tate, T03367) which may depict the same domed building visible on the left of Turner’s sketch. The older Welsh artist had described the wild and ‘romantick’ country in this remote part of Naples as the embodiment of the work of Salvator Rosa (1615–1673).2 A similar type of scenery can be seen on folio 28 (D15962; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 26).

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

1
See Francis W. Hawcroft, Travels in Italy 1776–1783: Based on the “Memoirs” of Thomas Jones, exhibition catalogue, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 1988, pp.103–5, and Timothy Wilcox, Francis Towne, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.151–2.
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘?Near Santa Maria dei Monti, Naples 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-near-santa-maria-dei-monti-naples-r1137885, accessed 20 April 2024.