J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Trieste, Graz and Danube Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Lighthouse and Coast at Trieste; ?the Castello di San Giusto; Moored Boats 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Lighthouse and Coast at Trieste; ?the Castello di San Giusto; Moored Boats’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 62 Recto:
The Lighthouse and Coast at Trieste; ?the Castello di San Giusto; Moored Boats 1840
D30119
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 62
Pencil on cream wove paper, 127 x 198 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wha’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘62’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXCIX – 62’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the main view is from south of Trieste’s lighthouse, looking north along the coast. Operational from 1833, it still stands on its castellated base at the southern end of the harbour, but was superseded in the 1920s by the monumental Faro della Vittoria, north of the city.1
Below to the right is a study of a boat or boats with the sails partly furled, while at the bottom left is what appears to be a thumbnail sketch with Trieste’s Castello di San Giusto and the coast to the south-west. These are part of a sequence of views in and around the Adriatic port city, made working inwards from the back of this sketchbook; see under folio 57 recto (D30109).2
1
See ‘Fanale – Lanterna’, Istria on the Internet, accessed 23 April 2018, http://www.istrianet.org/istria//architecture/lighthouses/trieste-lanterna.htm.
2
See also Powell 1995, pp.66, 81 note 18.
Technical notes:
There is staining at the top centre from the leather pencil loop secured under the rear paste-down (D30129; Turner Bequest CCXCIX 67).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Lighthouse and Coast at Trieste; ?the Castello di San Giusto; Moored Boats 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-lighthouse-and-coast-at-trieste-the-castello-di-san-r1196969, accessed 20 September 2024.