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 > Ancona to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Buildings in the Apennine Mountains; ?Pale, near Foligno 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Buildings in the Apennine Mountains; ?Pale, near Foligno’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Recto:
Buildings in the Apennine Mountains; ?Pale, near Foligno 1819
D14716
Turner Bequest CLXXVII 33
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 186 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[?Nagatina] bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘33’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVII 33’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch represents a view amidst the Apennines on the descent towards Foligno after Colfiorito. The subject is not conclusively identified but the topography of the mountains and the road winding up the slope towards a building in the top left-hand corner suggests that it may represent a view of the village of Pale, approximately four miles north-east of Foligno, with a small monastery above, the Eremo di Santa Maria di Giacobbe. During the nineteenth century, the area was famous for its paper mills, including one at Pale. Eustace provides a description of the location in A Classical Tour Through Italy:
At the village situate in the dell below amidst woods and rocks, the river pent up between the closing crag, works its way through several little chasms, and tumbles in seven or eight cascades down the steep through tufts of box and ilex, amidst houses and fragments of rocks intermingled, into the plain below, where turning two or three mills as it passes, it hurries along to join the neighbouring Clitumnus.1
The same buildings can be seen on folios 30 verso (D14711) and 31 (D14712).
On the far left-hand side there is also a small part of the sketch from the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 32 verso (D14715).

Nicola Moorby
November 2008

1
John Chetwode Eustace, A Classical Tour Through Italy, London 1815, vol.I, p.316.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Buildings in the Apennine Mountains; ?Pale, near Foligno 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2008, 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-buildings-in-the-apennine-mountains-pale-near-foligno-r1138879, accessed 20 September 2024.