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 A Town above a River, Perhaps near Cesena or Rimini; Distant Ranges of Hills towards San Marino 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Town above a River, Perhaps near Cesena or Rimini; Distant Ranges of Hills towards San Marino’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 56 Recto:
A Town above a River, Perhaps near Cesena or Rimini; Distant Ranges of Hills towards San Marino 1819
D14590
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 52
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘St Mar[...]’ centre right, descending vertically
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘52’ bottom right (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 52’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The main view continues across the whole of folio 55 verso opposite (D14589; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 51a). The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Town with river; also distant range of hills’) with ‘Rimini’,1 but the subject, a town above wooded river banks with a bridge on the other page, remains unconfirmed; Cesena and Rimini are depicted in adjacent studies.
Two drawings in the outer half, separated by a pencil line, were made with the page turned vertically. As Cecilia Powell has interpreted it,2 Turner’s brief note trailing off above them at the outer edge probably indicates San Marino, the tiny mountain republic which has retained its independence as an enclave a few miles inland from Rimini.
Cecilia Powell has commented on the relatively uneventful phase of Turner’s journey between leaving Bologna and reaching Rimini (folios 43 recto–60 verso; D14566–D14598; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 39a–56a);3 for his overall route south-east between Bologna and Ancona, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.
1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.518.
2
See Powell 1984, p.407
3
Ibid., pp.89–90, 465 note 98.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
March 2017

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Town above a River, Perhaps near Cesena or Rimini; Distant Ranges of Hills towards San Marino 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-a-town-above-a-river-perhaps-near-cesena-or-rimini-distant-r1186326, accessed 25 April 2024.