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 > Rome and Florence Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Studies of Arabesques, ?Rome 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Arabesques, ?Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 16 Verso:
Studies of Arabesques, ?Rome 1819
D16515
Turner Bequest CXCI 16 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page appears to contain rough studies of arabesque and grotesque decorations, probably copied from a painted Roman interior. Compare for example the lowest line of detail with the repeated garland motif on the wall of the left-hand side of Turner’s famous oil painting, Rome, from the Vatican exhibited 1820 (Tate, N00503).1

Nicola Moorby
February 2009

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, no.228.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Arabesques, ?Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2009, 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-studies-of-arabesques-rome-r1138408, accessed 20 September 2024.