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 > Pompeii, Amalfi, &c., Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Atrani from the West 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Atrani from the West’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 55 Verso:
Atrani from the West 1819
D15840
Turner Bequest CLXXXV 55 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The small town of Atrani lies within a bay below the steep mountainous cliffs of the Amalfi coast immediately east of Amalfi itself. This sketch depicts a view of Atrani from the west, on the coastal road to Amalfi. The distinctive bell-tower rising above the spiral coastal substructures to the right of the composition is the thirteenth-century Church of Santa Maria Maddalena.1 Related views can be seen on folios 35, 52 verso–54 and 56–57 (D15803, D15834–D15837 and D15841–D15843). Compare also an earlier watercolour by John ‘Warwick’ Smith (1749–1834), Otrano, Bay of Salerno 1778–9 (Tate, T08507).

Nicola Moorby
October 2010

1
The church now possesses two domes added during the early twentieth century.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Atrani from the West 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-atrani-from-the-west-r1138307, accessed 27 April 2024.