J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Italy c.1828-43 > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner An ?Italian Town among Hills by a Lake or the Sea c.1828-43

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘An ?Italian Town among Hills by a Lake or the Sea’ c.1828-43
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
An ?Italian Town among Hills by a Lake or the Sea c.1828–43
D36229
Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 367
Chalk, gouache and watercolour on buff wove paper, 141 x 189 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom centre
Stamped in black ‘CCCLXIV – 367’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject, buildings high above a rocky shore, is unidentified, but may be Italian; see the Introduction to this section for further brief discussion and dating. Finberg’s tentative 1909 Inventory title was ‘An Italian lake (?)’,1 although how he arrived at an Italian identification is unclear; he may have adopted an existing title from a checklist of the ongoing Sixth Loan Collection from the Turner Bequest, which did not have a printed catalogue.
Another work in the present section has been identified as showing the Priamar Fortress at Savona, on the Mediterranean coast of north-western Italy (Tate D24705; Turner Bequest CCLIX 140), and this view is possibly in the vicinity, or near Genoa (see under Tate D33718; Turner Bequest CCXLI 39).
The verso is D40183, a pencil drawing which may show another aspect of the same scene.

Matthew Imms
February 2016

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.1206.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘An ?Italian Town among Hills by a Lake or the Sea c.1828–43 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-an-italian-town-among-hills-by-a-lake-or-the-sea-r1183044, accessed 16 April 2024.