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 Various Sketches by Turner including a Landscape and Figure Studies; and Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Various Sketches by Turner including a Landscape and Figure Studies; and Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Recto:
Various Sketches by Turner including a Landscape and Figure Studies; and Notes by James Hakewill on Travelling in Italy 1819
D13899
Turner Bequest CLXXI 22
Pencil on white wove paper, 88 x 114 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[?Lingua De Lapre]’ top right, ‘[?Modena] [...]’ top left, and ‘Claude’ beside sketch of plant
Inscribed by James Hakewill in black ink (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘22’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXI 22’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains advice to Turner on travelling in Italy in preparation for the artist’s first tour of the country in 1819. The author of the inscription 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, which relates to places of interest in Verona, was first transcribed by Finberg,1 and reads ‘Verona – | Amphitheater | Gates – | View from Count Guisti’s | Tomb of Romeo & Juliet.’ The suggestions are based upon Hakewill’s own Italian travels in 1816–17 and views of the city, including the amphitheatre and the vista from the gardens of Count Guisti, can be found amidst his own drawings from the time (British School at Rome Library).2 Turner also visited Verona although on the outward journey to Rome, see the Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14368; Turner Bequest CLXXV 28a), rather than the return route recommended by Hakewill. The notes continue on folio 23 (D13901).
Turner has also used the sheet to make a number of swift on-the-spot pencil sketches. These include some thumbnail studies of figures, a plant, and an unidentified landscape scene. Part of the line of the latter continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 21 verso (D13898).

Nicola Moorby
March 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.498.
2
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.6.18–6.19, pp.382–3, reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Various Sketches by Turner including a Landscape and Figure Studies; and 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-various-sketches-by-turner-including-a-landscape-and-figure-r1138717, accessed 19 September 2024.