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 Aurelian Walls, Rome, from Villa Borghese 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Aurelian Walls, Rome, from Villa Borghese’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Recto:
Aurelian Walls, Rome, from Villa Borghese 1819
D16522
Turner Bequest CXCI 20
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘20’ bottom right [very faint]
Stamped in black ‘CXCI 20’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Thomas Ashby identified the subject of this sketch as the walls of Rome from Villa Borghese.1 Turner’s viewpoint appears to be from one of the upper storeys of the seventeenth-century villa (present-day Museo Borghese), and part of the building itself appears on the far left-hand side of the composition. The study looks south-east across the formal gardens towards a section of the Aurelian walls between Porta Pinciana and Porta Salaria, with the Alban Hills in the far distance beyond.
Sketches by Turner of works of art in the Borghese collection can be found in the Remarks (Italy) sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CXCIII).
1
Thomas Ashby, unpublished notes, Turner Bequest Archive, Tate.
Verso:
Blank

Nicola Moorby
November 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Aurelian Walls, Rome, from Villa Borghese 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 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-aurelian-walls-rome-from-villa-borghese-r1138415, accessed 18 April 2024.