Joseph Mallord William Turner Sketches in the Bay of Baiae, Including the So-Called Temples of Diana and Venus 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 80 Verso:
Sketches in the Bay of Baiae, Including the So-Called Temples of Diana and Venus 1819
D15714
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 78 a
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 78 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 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.545, as ‘Sketches of the Bay of Baiæ’.
1969
John Gage, Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth, London 1969, p.131 [incorrectly as CLXXIV].
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Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, pp.180 note 42, 188 note 84, 247 note 85, 492 note 42.
1987
Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence, New Haven and London 1987, pp.79 note 35, 83 note 65, 120 note 47.
1998
James Hamilton, Turner and the Scientists, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1998, p.135 note 28.
This page contains sketches within the Bay of Baiae, an ancient Roman bathing resort approximately ten miles west of Naples. The viewpoint for both studies appears to be near the so-called Temple of Mercury. The upper drawing represents the view looking north with the so-called Temple of Diana, a ruined bath-house with a concave roof. The lower meanwhile depicts the prospect looking in the opposite direction, south-east across the bay towards the Posillipo coastline and the distant island of Nisida. Rising on the headland to the left is a fortress known as the Castello di Baia, whilst on the far right-hand side is the octagonal ruin known as the Temple of Venus. On the far left-hand side of the page is part of a separate landscape composition which has spilled over from the opposite sheet, see folio 81 (D15715; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 79).
Turner made a large number of sketches of Baiae and its ancient monuments, see folios 79 verso–80, 81, 82, 84 verso–89 verso, 92 (D15712–D15713, D15715, D15717, D15722–D15732 and D15737; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 77a–78, 79, 80, 82a–87a and 90). These drawings formed the compositional basis of one of three oil paintings completed in the months and years following Turner’s return from his first tour of Italy, The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl exhibited 1823 (Tate, N00505).1 Indeed the finished picture features a vista very similar to that depicted here and repeated within other on-the-spot drawings, and it is therefore possible that the artist was already planning the composition during his visit to the area.2
A number of scholars have followed John Gage’s suggestion that the dark dots covering this sheet were made by a shower of hot volcanic ash, probably dating from Turner’s ascent of Vesuvius, see folio 46 verso (D15645; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 44a).3 More recently, however, James Hamilton has argued the marks were made by a spattering of a ‘light inky paint’.4
Nicola Moorby
June 2010
How to cite
Nicola Moorby, ‘Sketches in the Bay of Baiae, Including the So-Called Temples of Diana and Venus 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www