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 The Arch of Trajan, Arco Clementino and Lighthouse along the Pier at Ancona 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Arch of Trajan, Arco Clementino and Lighthouse along the Pier at Ancona’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 76 Verso:
The Arch of Trajan, Arco Clementino and Lighthouse along the Pier at Ancona 1819
D14628
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 72a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Triumphal arches at Ancona’), changing ‘arches’ to ‘arch of Trajan’. He crossed out Finberg’s curly bracket (usually an indication of a continuous view) linking this page with folio 77 recto opposite (D14629; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 73);1 the two drawings are indeed separate, albeit showing different aspects of the same scene.
The viewpoint is the Banchina south-east of the Arch of Trajan, outlined on the right, looking west along the broad pier to the Arco Clementino, which has since lost its upper storey on this side, and the lighthouse, only the base of which survives, supporting a coastguard station. Today the monuments are somewhat marooned in a heavily developed area of the port; the section of harbour wall between them remains, but the tower between the arches has gone.
For Cecilia Powell and James Hamilton’s comments on Turner’s varied and extensive coverage of Ancona, which takes up most of the last quarter or so of this sketchbook, see under folio 69 verso (D14514; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 65a).2

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.519.
2
See Powell 1984, pp.92–3, 466 note 109, Powell 1987, pp.25, 202 note 45, and Hamilton 1997, pp.198, 325 note 13.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Arch of Trajan, Arco Clementino and Lighthouse along the Pier at Ancona 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-the-arch-of-trajan-arco-clementino-and-lighthouse-along-the-r1186364, accessed 23 April 2024.