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 Venice: Islands in the Lagoon with Mountains on the Mainland Beyond 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Venice: Islands in the Lagoon with Mountains on the Mainland Beyond’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Verso:
Venice: Islands in the Lagoon with Mountains on the Mainland Beyond 1819
D14509
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 11a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?T... F... Wood]’ towards bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing continues across folio 12 recto opposite (D14510). On this page the regular outline of the cemetery on the Isola di San Michele appears to be shown here at the centre from the south or south-east with the Murano islands beyond, probably from the quays of the Fondamenta (or Fondamente) Nuove. Compare the right-hand side of the painting Campo Santo, Venice, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1842 (Toledo Museum of Art).1
Turner’s attention was generally taken with more conventionally picturesque aspects of central Venice itself on this visit, but there is what seems to be another view out from the Fondamenta Nuove in the contemporary Milan to Venice book (Tate D14359; Turner Bequest CLXXV 23). For adjacent views of the city, see the present sketchbook’s Introduction.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.246 no.397, pl.401 (colour).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Venice: Islands in the Lagoon with Mountains on the Mainland Beyond 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-venice-islands-in-the-lagoon-with-mountains-on-the-mainland-r1186244, accessed 17 May 2024.