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 > Turin, Como, Lugarno, Maggiore ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?San Giorio di Susa 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?San Giorio di Susa’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 3 Verso:
?San Giorio di Susa 1819
D14149
Turner Bequest CLXXIV 3 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 186 mm
Inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘3a’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch represents part of a larger landscape composition continued on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 4 (D14150). Turner has labelled the right-hand side of the view ‘St Giorgio’, and this has been tentatively interpreted by Finberg and Federico Crimi as San Giorio di Susa,1 a town in the Susa valley approximately twelve miles east of the French-Italian border. Turner passed the town en route to Turin at the start of his Italian tour in 1819 and this view appears to depict the approach from the road to the west. The rough, schematic nature of the drawing and the uneven, disjointed lines describing the profile of the mountains indicates that the artist was sketching from a moving vehicle, probably a diligence, (see Tate D14041; Turner Bequest CLXXIII 32a).

Nicola Moorby
December 2012

1
Finberg 1909, p.507; Crimi 2007, p.23 note 16.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘?San Giorio di Susa 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-san-giorio-di-susa-r1142672, accessed 21 December 2024.