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 > Route to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819
D13865
Turner Bequest CLXXI 4
Black ink on white wove paper, 88 x 114 mm
Inscribed by James Hakewill (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘4’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXI 4’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The inscription on this page represents advice to Turner on travelling in Italy in preparation for the artist’s first tour of the country in 1819. The author is James Hakewill (1778–1843), with whom Turner collaborated on the engraved print project, Picturesque Tour of Italy, published 1820 (see the introduction to the sketchbook). The text was first transcribed by Finberg,1 and is repeated here with minor variations:
the Islands on the Lago Maggiore. | see the Isola Bella (and if you have time | the Isola Madre but it not particular) | Como – . go up the Lake to Cadinabbia | stopping at the Plinciana &c. – go opposite | Cadinabbia to the Villa of a Duke (I forget | his name). | Take two boatmen & pay them 3 francs ea. | P. day. The men will point out what | is worth seeing – The Orrido. Fiume Latte &c
Hakewill had himself visited the Italian Lakes in 1816–17, and views of Lake Maggiore and Lake Como, including the village of Fiumelatte and the waterfall of L’Orrido, can be found amidst his drawings from this time (British School at Rome Library).2 Despite deviating from Hakewill’s suggested itinerary, Turner’s route from Milan to Venice did encompass a loop around the lakes, see the Turin, Como, Lugarno and Maggiore sketchbook and Como and Venice sketchbook (both Tate; Turner Bequest CLXXIV and CLXXXI). Hakewill’s notes continue on folio 5 (D13867) and the content is also repeated to some extent on folio 38 verso (D13933).

Nicola Moorby
March 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.496.
2
See Tony Cubberley and Luke Herrmann, Twilight of the Grand Tour: A Catalogue of the drawings by James Hakewill in the British School at Rome Library, Rome 1992, nos.2.4–2.12, pp.119–128, reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 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-notes-by-james-hakewill-on-travelling-in-italy-r1138683, accessed 18 April 2024.