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 Coastal Views from the Gulf of Trieste, with the Lighthouse at Trieste in the Distance; a Wooded Landscape ?with a Bridge and Distant Town 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Coastal Views from the Gulf of Trieste, with the Lighthouse at Trieste in the Distance; a Wooded Landscape ?with a Bridge and Distant Town’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 66 Recto:
Coastal Views from the Gulf of Trieste, with the Lighthouse at Trieste in the Distance; a Wooded Landscape ?with a Bridge and Distant Town 1840
D30127
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 66
Pencil on cream wove paper, 127 x 198 mm
Partial watermark ‘atman’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘66’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXCIX – 66’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, there are at least two bands of landscape studies, showing hills along the coastline of the Gulf of Trieste as Turner travelled east by sea from Venice. The focus of the lower one appears to be the harbour at Trieste itself, seen to the north-east beyond scattered shipping, with the 1830s lighthouse which still stands at the southern end of the harbour, albeit superseded in the 1920s by the monumental Faro della Vittoria, north of the port.1 This is one of a sequence of views in and around the Adriatic city, made working inwards from the back of this sketchbook; see under folio 57 recto (D30109).2
The other way up, at the outer edge, is a rapid study of a wooded landscape with a bridge in the centre and what may be slight indications of a town or city in the distance towards the left. The subject was likely recorded later on Turner’s journey through present-day Slovenia and Austria (see the Introduction).
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, ‘Coastal Views from the Gulf of Trieste, with the Lighthouse at Trieste in the Distance; a Wooded Landscape ?with a Bridge and Distant Town 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-coastal-views-from-the-gulf-of-trieste-with-the-lighthouse-r1196977, accessed 24 April 2024.