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 > Paris, France, Savoy 2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Susa, with the Arch of Augustus 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Susa, with the Arch of Augustus’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 37 Verso:
Susa, with the Arch of Augustus 1819
D14050
Turner Bequest CLXXIII 37 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 185 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this sketch is Susa, a city in the Alps near the Franco-Italian border approximately thirty miles west of Turin. Turner’s viewpoint is to the right of the Porta Savoia (also known as the Porta Romana) and the Cathedral of San Giusto looking south-west towards the Arch of Augustus. This ninth-century monument was erected by the Emperor Augustus to commemorate the ‘Pax Augusta’, a peace treaty with Marcus Julius Cottius, leader of the tribes of the so-called Cottian Alps (the mountainous border between France and Italy).1Related studies of the arch can be found on folio 36 verso (D14048). Turner also mentioned it within the notes he made from the popular guidebook A Classical Tour Through Italy by Revd John Chetwode Eustace (see the Italian Guide Book sketchbook, Tate D13962; Turner Bequest CLXXII 16a). Further drawings dating from later European tours can also be found within other sketchbooks (see for example the Fort Bard sketchbook, 1836, Tate D29313; Turner Bequest CCXCIV 54).
For a more detailed discussion of Turner’s arrival in Italy and the related Alpine sketches see the Introduction to the sketchbook.

Nicola Moorby
March 2013

1
See Fred S. Kleiner, A History of Roman Art, Boston 2010, pp.93–4, reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Susa, with the Arch of Augustus 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 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-susa-with-the-arch-of-augustus-r1142908, accessed 16 April 2024.