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 > Turin, Como, Lugarno, Maggiore ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Part of a View of Turin and the River Po, with the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Part of a View of Turin and the River Po, with the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Verso:
Part of a View of Turin and the River Po, with the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I 1819
D14195
Turner Bequest CLXXIV 25 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The first major Italian city which Turner reached on his 1819 tour was Turin. Here he made a significant number of sketches, reflecting not only his interest in the topography and architecture of Turin, but also the fact that he stayed in the city for a few days, allowing himself time to roam about the streets and sketch at greater leisure than was possible on the road.
The subject of this sketch is part of a view of Turin from the western (left) bank of the River Po. Turner’s viewpoint looks down-river (north) towards the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I, a bridge which had only recently been built at the start of the nineteenth century and completed in 1814. The composition continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 27 (D14196; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 26). For a similar contemporaneous view see a drawing by James Hakewill (1778–1843), Turin. The New Bridge, Superga, and Capuchin Convent (British School at Rome).1
For further sketches of Turin see folio 12 (D14166; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 11).

Nicola Moorby
December 2012

1
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, no.2.16, p.132, reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Part of a View of Turin and the River Po, with the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-part-of-a-view-of-turin-and-the-river-po-with-the-ponte-r1142716, accessed 18 September 2024.