J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Monro School c.1794-8 > Album of Copies of Swiss and Italian ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Thomas Girtin Naples: The Castel Sant'Elmo c.1794-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Thomas Girtin, ‘Naples: The Castel Sant'Elmo’ c.1794-8
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Thomas Girtin 1775–1802
Folio 14 Recto:
Naples: The Castel Sant’Elmo c.1794–8
D36491
Turner Bequest CCCLXXIV 13
Pencil and grey and blue-grey wash on white wove paper, 170 x 225 mm mounted on white cartridge paper, 368 x 480 mm
Inscribed on mount lower right, by R. Williams ‘Castel Sant’Elmo Naples | after J.R.Cozens Beckford IV/22’
Inscribed in pencil ‘13’ on mount, top right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLXXIV – 13’ on mount, bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a copy of a drawing by John Robert Cozens (1752–1797); see Beckford Sketchbook IV, pp.21, 22, dated ‘Nov. 10. 1782’ (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, D1975.7.22).1 The subject is copied in reverse from p.22. The finished watercolour of this subject is now in the British Museum, London.2 Both Girtin and Turner seem to have misread Cozens’s drawing: the slope of rock in the left foreground here replaces a large shadow cast on to the wall in the original.
R. Williams, who inscribed the mount, was Research Assistant in the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings.
1
Bell and Girtin 1935, p.65 under no.310; Charles Nugent, British Watercolours in the Whitworth Art Gallery, the University of Manchester: A Summary Catalogue of Drawings and Watercolours by Artists Born before 1880, London and Manchester 2003, p.98, reproduced.
2
Bell and Girtin 1935, p.65 no.310, as Randall Davies collection.
Verso:
Blank (laid down).

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Naples: The Castel Sant’Elmo c.1794–8 by Joseph Mallord William Turner, Thomas Girtin’, catalogue entry, April 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-thomas-girtin-naples-the-castel-santelmo-r1140560, accessed 21 November 2024.