Joseph Mallord William Turner Amalfi Coast from the Sea, with Atrani and Amalfi 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 52 Verso:
Amalfi Coast from the Sea, with Atrani and Amalfi 1819
D15834
Turner Bequest CLXXXV 52 a
Turner Bequest CLXXXV 52 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.548, as ‘Do. [On the coast (probably Amalfi)]’.
1984
Cecilia Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, pp.189 note 87, 491 note 32.
1987
Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence, New Haven and London 1987, pp.79 note 25, 83 note 67.
1993
Ian Warrell, J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Impressions de Gran Bretanya i el Continent Europeu / Impresiones de Gran Bretaña y el Continente Europeo, exhibition catalogue, Centre Cultural de la Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona 1993, p.299 under no.49.
1994
Ian Warrell, J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Aquarelles et Dessins du Legs Turner: Collection de la Tate Gallery, Londres / Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest: Collection from the Tate Gallery, London, exhibition catalogue, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi 1994, p.162 under no.49.
The subject of this sketch is a view of Amalfi, and the adjacent village of Atrani, seen from a boat navigating the rugged coastline from Salerno. The curving substructures rising above the shoreline in the centre represents Atrani, with the thirteenth-century Church of Santa Maria Maddalena,1 whilst visible beyond is the coastal road leading to Amalfi. On the far left-hand side can be seen a sixteenth-century watch-tower situated on the promontory near Conca dei Marini. The composition of the vista is very similar to a view after John ‘Warwick’ Smith which Turner copied in the Italian Guide Book sketchbook (see Tate D13971; Turner Bequest CLXXII 21a). For further sketches of Amalfi and Atrani see folios 35, 46 and 53–57 (D15803, D15821 and D15835–D15843). Turner may have referred to this sequence for his later vignette illustration for Rogers’s Italy, published 1830 (see Tate D27684; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 167).
Nicola Moorby
October 2010
How to cite
Nicola Moorby, ‘Amalfi Coast from the Sea, with Atrani and Amalfi 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www