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 Three Sketches of Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore; and a ?View of the Borromean Gulf 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Sketches of Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore; and a ?View of the Borromean Gulf’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 79 Verso:
Three Sketches of Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore; and a ?View of the Borromean Gulf 1819
D14297
Turner Bequest CLXXIV 78 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Federico Crimi has identified the three sketches at the top of this page as studies of the Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore.1 The drawing on the left depicts a statue and other decorative elements within the Teatro Massimo, an elaborate wall decorated with sculptures and grottoes which forms the northern side of the terraced pyramid at the heart of the garden’s design. Meanwhile the central and right-hand sketches represent details from the so-called ‘Giardino d’Amore’ (Garden of Love). For a more detailed discussion of Turner’s sketches of Isola Bella see folio 77 verso (D14293; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 76a).
Also on this page is an inverted landscape sketch. The details are too rough to be conclusively identified although they are likely to depict a view of the Borromean Gulf, within Lake Maggiore.2

Nicola Moorby
January 2013

1
Crimi 2009, p.64.
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Three Sketches of Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore; and a ?View of the Borromean Gulf 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2013, 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-three-sketches-of-isola-bella-lake-maggiore-and-a-view-of-r1142818, accessed 26 April 2024.