Joseph Mallord William Turner The Mole Lighthouse, Naples 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 67 Recto:
The Mole Lighthouse, Naples 1819
D15688
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 65
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 65
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘281’ bottom right and ‘65’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXIV 65’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXIV 65’ bottom right
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 ‘Lighthouse on quay’.
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Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, p.180 note 42.
1987
Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence, New Haven and London 1987, p.79 note 35.
One of the most famous landmarks in Naples during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the old lighthouse which stood at the elbow of the former L-shaped Mole (pier) facing the port and arsenale (naval shipyard) near Castel Nuovo.1 It appears in countless paintings from the period, often looking east out to sea, with Vesuvius and the Sorrentine peninsula in the background.2 Turner has adopted a similar viewpoint here and has drawn the lighthouse from the entrance to the jetty looking across the Bay of Naples. For alternative studies of the lighthouse see folios 36 and 70–70 verso (D15625 and D15672–D15673; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 35 and 58–58a), whilst for the view from the Mole looking in the opposite direction see folio 66 verso (D15687; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 64a).
Nicola Moorby
June 2010
The port of Naples has undergone extensive redevelopment since the early nineteenth century but the approximate position of the lighthouse was near the present-day ferry terminal of Molo Angioino (Stazione Marittima).
See for example Thomas Jones (1742–1803), The Bay of Naples and the Mole Lighthouse 1782 (Tate, T08246) and John Robert Cozens (1752–1797), Vesuvius and Somma from the Mole at Naples, (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). Both reproduced in Francis W. Hawcroft, Travels in Italy 1776–1783: Based on the “Memoirs” of Thomas Jones, exhibition catalogue, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 1988, nos.110 and 112, pp.94–99.
How to cite
Nicola Moorby, ‘The Mole Lighthouse, Naples 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