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; Towers and Domes 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Coastal Views from the Gulf of Trieste; Towers and Domes’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 66 Verso:
Coastal Views from the Gulf of Trieste; Towers and Domes 1840
D30128
Turner Bequest CCXCIX 66a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 127 x 198 mm
Partial watermark ‘atman’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘R | 7 | 9’ and ‘Thur[...] | Danube’ bottom right, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, there are four bands of landscape profiles, showing hills along the coastline of the Gulf of Trieste as Turner travelled east by sea from Venice. They fall within a sequence of views in and around the Adriatic port city of Trieste made working inwards from the back of this sketchbook; see under folio 57 recto (D30109).1
At the gutter above are slight continuations of buildings from inside the back cover opposite (D30129; Turner Bequest CCXCIX 67). Inverted at the bottom centre appears to be the profile of a fortress or hilltop buildings, and at the bottom right, at right angles, are notes of travelling expenses or distances connected with the River Danube, the subject of studies elsewhere in this book (see the Introduction), as well a thumbnail study of towers and onion domes, likely also made further along the route.
1
See also Powell 1995, pp.66, 81 note 18.
Technical notes:
There is staining at the bottom centre from the leather pencil loop secured under the rear paste-down opposite (D30129; Turner Bequest CCXCIX 67), and slight offsetting from the red chalk used on that page.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Coastal Views from the Gulf of Trieste; Towers and Domes 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-towers-and-domes-r1196978, accessed 25 April 2024.