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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Second Italian Tour 1828-9 > Marseilles to Genoa Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Views of Albenga, Liguria 1828

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Views of Albenga, Liguria’ 1828
Folio 2 Verso:
Views of Albenga, Liguria 1828
D21136
Turner Bequest CCXXXI 2a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 174 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
At the outer edge, uppermost on this page (turned horizontally), is a rough and partially scribbled-out drawing of mountains. At the bottom, the other way up, is a schematic drawing of the topography of a town with a bridge and several prominent towers. The geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has identified the location as Albenga, a small city in the Liguria region of Italy, known as the ‘la città delle cento torri’ (city of a hundred spires).1
These same towers can also faintly be seen in the background of the main sketch in the centre of the page.2 However, they have been almost completely obscured by the more careful and detailed study of a gateway that appears to have been executed directly on top. This is tentatively identified as the Porta Torlaro, near the north-west corner of the old city walls.
For further, more detailed sketches of Albenga, see folios 3 verso, 29 verso and 52 verso–54 recto (D21138, D21188, D21234–D21237).

Nicola Moorby
March 2017

Revised by Hannah Kaspar
November 2024

1
Roland Courtot, ‘Les Carnets de William Turner: Recherches d’identification et de localisation des dessins’, unpublished research notes, Université de Provence à Aix, April 2008, p.2, as ‘Albenga’ (shared with former Tate cataloguer Nicola Moorby in email correspondence at that date).
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Views of Albenga, Liguria 1828’, catalogue entry, March 2017, revised by Hannah Kaspar, November 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2025, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/views-of-albenga-liguria-r1209814, accessed 11 May 2026.