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 > Gandolfo to Naples Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches of the Ferry over the Garigliano River; and Landscape Studies on the Road to Capua, Including a Distant View of Sessa Aurunca 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Sketches of the Ferry over the Garigliano River; and Landscape Studies on the Road to Capua, Including a Distant View of Sessa Aurunca’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Verso:
Two Sketches of the Ferry over the Garigliano River; and Landscape Studies on the Road to Capua, Including a Distant View of Sessa Aurunca 1819
D15616
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 30 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[?River]’ within lower right of first sketch parallel with left-hand edge. Also ‘o’, ‘o’, ‘B’, ‘G’, GG’, ‘B’ and ‘YB’ within sky, and ‘sea’ far left, and ‘[?P...d] B’ and ‘ Claude D’ bottom of second sketch parallel with left-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Finberg first identified, the two sketches parallel with the left-hand edge of this page represent views of the ferry over the Garigliano river which formed part of the nineteenth-century route between Formia and Capua to Naples.1 Compare Turner’s on-the-spot studies of the buildings on the banks of the river with his thumbnail pen-and-ink copy of a view after John ‘Warwick’ Smith in the Italian Guide Book sketchbook (Tate D13968; Turner Bequest CLXXII 20, bottom right). As so often during his Italian travels, the colours of the landscape appear to have reminded him of the paintings of the seventeenth-century French artist, Claude Lorrain (circa 1604/5–82). Related studies can also be seen on folio 31 (D15615; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 30).
The remaining three drawings represent landscape views seen from the next stage of the journey east towards Capua. The central sketch is a distant view of the town of Sessa Aurunca. The vistas spill over onto the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 32 (D15617; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 31).

Nicola Moorby
April 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.543.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Two Sketches of the Ferry over the Garigliano River; and Landscape Studies on the Road to Capua, Including a Distant View of Sessa Aurunca 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-two-sketches-of-the-ferry-over-the-garigliano-river-and-r1138078, accessed 19 September 2024.