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 East of the Cathedral 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ancona from East of the Cathedral’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 80 Verso:
Ancona from East of the Cathedral 1819
D14636
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 76a
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 81 recto opposite (D14637; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 77), looking south. The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Ancona’): ‘Panorama from a spot just East of the apse of the Cathedral’.1 The Cathedral of San Ciriaco and its campanile are seen on the other page; here the view is east along the cliffs to Monte Cardeto, now the setting for a redundant Victorian lighthouse.
In the middle distance is the Baroque church of San Gregorio Illuminatore, which has since lost its elaborate spire, in front of which sits a man with a telescope, apparently with a reclining companion; they are perhaps sailors on shore leave from the port on the other side of the headland. Today the view is framed by trees in the cathedral’s car park.
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 East of the Cathedral 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-east-of-the-cathedral-r1186372, accessed 19 September 2024.