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 > Vatican Fragments Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Landscape Sketches, Including a Tomb at Bovillae and Views of Castel Gandolfo 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Landscape Sketches, Including a Tomb at Bovillae and Views of Castel Gandolfo’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Recto:
Landscape Sketches, Including a Tomb at Bovillae and Views of Castel Gandolfo 1819
D15159
Turner Bequest CLXXX 28
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘28’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXX 28’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In addition to using the Vatican Fragments sketchbook to record details of art and architecture in Rome, Turner also appears to have employed it on several occasions during his journey to or from Naples. This page contains several landscape views which appear to depict sites on or near the Via Appia, the road which leads south out of Rome. The rough nature of Turner’s draughtsmanship, and the way in which the artist has crammed the drawings onto a single page, suggests that they must have been executed at speed, probably from a moving carriage.
Thomas Ashby has identified the subject of the three sketches at the top of the page as a tomb known as the ‘Torraccio’, which stands near Bovillae, an ancient village near the Via Appia.1 He has furthermore identified the three lower sketches as views of Castel Gandolfo from below. For further sketches of Castel Gandolfo see the Albano, Nemi, Rome sketchbook (for example Tate D15326; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 17a) and the Gandolfo to Naples sketchbook (Tate D15562–3; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 4a–5).

Nicola Moorby
December 2009

1
Thomas Ashby, unpublished manuscript notes, Turner Bequest Archive, Tate. Reproduced in Oreste Ferrari, Tea Marintelli, Valerie Scott et al., Thomas Ashby: Un Archeologo Fotografa la Campagna Romana Tra ’800 e’900, Rome 1986, p.162, no.125 figs. 1–2.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Landscape Sketches, Including a Tomb at Bovillae and Views of Castel Gandolfo 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2009, 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-landscape-sketches-including-a-tomb-at-bovillae-and-views-of-r1139571, accessed 19 September 2024.