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

Despite the fact that it was still largely unexcavated, Turner visited the archaeological site at Herculaneum in 1819.1 Most of the ancient town was still buried underground and virtually the only accessible structure of note was the theatre which could be experienced via a sequence of eighteenth-century tunnels. The artist made a sequence of sketches of the ruins as they appeared in the gloom of these subterranean passages. The details of these studies are generally very rough and schematic, but in this instance it is possible to identify part of the interior of the theatre with the tiered seating of the semi-circular arena, and the arched openings to the adjoining corridors.2 For a fuller description of the theatre at Herculaneum and Turner’s on-the-spot sketches see folio 86 (D15896; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 84).