Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches: View of a Villa at Frascati; and Entrance to Marino with the Public Washhouse 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 27 Verso:
Two Sketches: View of a Villa at Frascati; and Entrance to Marino with the Public Washhouse 1819
D15346
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 27 a
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 27 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Frascati | Villa Borgashe’ underneath two arches in sketch and ‘Soracte’ above horizon far 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.537, as ‘ “Frascati” with the “Villa Borgashe” “Ld Egremont’s Claude (?)”; also sketch at “Marino” ’.
1983
Michael Kitson, ‘Turner and Claude’, Turner Studies, Winter 1983, vol.2, no.2, pp.11–12 note 47.
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Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, p.194 note 102.
1987
Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence, New Haven and London 1987, p.[88] note 78.
1990
Kathleen Nicholson, Turner’s Classical Landscapes: Myth and Meaning, Princeton 1990, p.262.
Turner’s inscription ‘Villa Borgashe’ is likely to be a mis-spelling of ‘Borghese’, and therefore possibly refers to the Villa Borghese, also known as the Villa Parisi or the Villa Taverna, one of the many grand summer houses built for the great papal families during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If this is the case however, Turner’s viewpoint in this sketch is not clear. He appears to have drawn the view looking north towards Mount Soracte (also known as Soratte) near Rome but the geography of the landscape also appears to slope steeply away on the right, which would not in fact be the case. The view continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 28 (D15347).
On the left-hand side of the page is a separate sketch drawn with the book held in portrait format which depicts the entrance to the town of Marino near Lake Albano. The tower at the bottom of the hill on the left and the rectangular trough with scrolled architectural detailing indicate the public washhouse, see folio 28 (D15347). The composition of the view is almost identical to that in a drawing by James Hakewill, At the Entrance to Marino from Albano 1817 (British School at Rome Library), which Turner would almost certainly have known.1 It also recalls his small pen and ink copy of the view by John ‘Warwick’ Smith in the Italian Guide Book sketchbook (see Tate D13969; Turner Bequest CLXXII 20).
Nicola Moorby
May 2008
How to cite
Nicola Moorby, ‘Two Sketches: View of a Villa at Frascati; and Entrance to Marino with the Public Washhouse 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www