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 Ancona from the Pier West of the Arch of Trajan 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ancona from the Pier West of the Arch of Trajan’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Verso:
Ancona from the Pier West of the Arch of Trajan 1819
D14630
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 73a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Partial watermark ‘Allnutt | 18’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing continues across folio 78 recto opposite (D14631; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 74). The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Town and harbour of Ancona’): ‘from the Mole to the S W of the Arch of Trajan’.1 The view is eastwards along the broad pier leading to the lighthouse, with the Arch of Trajan in the centre here and the Cathedral of San Ciriaco high on the headland beyond.
The buildings on the left have gone, leaving a row of exposed arches below the platform on this side of the arch and exposing the fortified sea wall. The view continues south-east along the Banchina seafront on the other page; the shore to the right has been built up with concrete aprons and dock facilities.
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, ‘Ancona from the Pier West of the Arch of Trajan 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-ancona-from-the-pier-west-of-the-arch-of-trajan-r1186366, accessed 20 September 2024.