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 Rome; Also Sketches by Turner including a Distant View of ?Jesi, and a Study of Rocket 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Notes by James Hakewill on Rome; Also Sketches by Turner including a Distant View of ?Jesi, and a Study of Rocket’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 35 Verso:
Notes by James Hakewill on Rome; Also Sketches by Turner including a Distant View of ?Jesi, and a Study of Rocket 1819
D13926
Turner Bequest CLXXI 35 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 88 x 114 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[?Jesi] and ‘[?Sava...]’ within landscape sketch, and ‘Rucola | Rucola | [?Plush Cola]’ bottom left, parallel with left-hand edge
Inscribed by James Hakewill in black ink (see main catalogue entry)
 
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 his first Italian tour of 1819. The author is James Hakewill (1778–1843), with whom the artist 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:
At Rome –
Frescoes in the Chapels of the
Church of St Gregorio.
Pictures in the Palazzo Schiarra
D[itt]o Palazzo Chigi
Palazzo Doria
{in the Church of the Capuchins
{is the St Michael of Guido
{Palazzo Rospigliosi for
{the Aurora of Guido
Villa Ludovisi for the Aurora of Guido ^Guercino^ and
fine statues.
Spada Palace for the
Statue of Pompey.
The text lists places of artistic interest in Rome including the Palazzo Rospigliosi-Pallavicini on the Quirinal Hill which Turner visited to view the famous ceiling fresco, the Aurora of Guido Reni (1575–1642). He made extensive notes on the paintings in the Remarks (Italy) sketchbook (Tate D16766–D16767; Turner Bequest CXCIII 3–3a).2 Hakewill’s list continues on folio 35 (D13925) and other notes on Rome can be found on folios 13 verso–15 verso (D13882–D13886).
The page also contains part of a landscape sketch by Turner, continued from the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 36 (D13928). The annotated inscription suggests that the subject is a distant view of Jesi, a town west of Ancona, with the Apennine mountains beyond. Furthermore, the artist has also used the page to make rough pencil studies of a plant which he has labelled ‘Rucola’, the Italian word for rocket.

Nicola Moorby
March 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.500.
2
See Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence, New Haven and London 1987, p.[67].

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Notes by James Hakewill on Rome; Also Sketches by Turner including a Distant View of ?Jesi, and a Study of Rocket 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-rome-also-sketches-by-turner-r1138743, accessed 16 April 2024.