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 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Imola 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Imola’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 37 Verso:
?Imola 1819
D14555
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 33a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Imola]’ towards bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, this view includes what seems to be a substantial wooden bridge with a fortified tower or gateway and other buildings beyond. Although it falls among views of Bologna (see under folio 24 recto (D14532), and has been classified along with them without further comment more recently,1 Turner’s use of this sketchbook was occasionally haphazard, and Finberg tentatively interpreted the scrawled inscription as ‘Imola’, indicating the town approximately twenty miles south-east of Bologna on Turner’s eastwards route towards Ancona.
There are figure studies and a slight landscape labelled ‘Imola’ in the contemporary Route to Rome sketchbook (Tate D13864; Turner Bequest CLXXI 3a), together with street views (Tate D13890, D13894; CLXXI 17a, 19a); there may also be a view near Poggio, a few miles to its north-west (Tate D13922; CLXXI 33a).

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
See Powell 1984, pp.92, 466 note 110, Powell 1987, pp.25, 202 note 46, Hamilton 2008, pp.43, 90 note 22, and Hamilton 2009, pp.42, 150 note 22.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?Imola 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-imola-r1186291, accessed 22 September 2024.