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 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Urban Buildings with a Small Dome in the Distance, Sailing Boats and Figures ?near a Bridge, Possibly in Venice or an Adriatic Port 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Urban Buildings with a Small Dome in the Distance, Sailing Boats and Figures ?near a Bridge, Possibly in Venice or an Adriatic Port’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 52 Recto:
Urban Buildings with a Small Dome in the Distance, Sailing Boats and Figures ?near a Bridge, Possibly in Venice or an Adriatic Port 1819
D14582
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 48
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘48’ bottom right (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 48’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With only its distant dome, likely of a church tower or campanile, being particularly distinctive, this scene in a town or city remains unidentified; Finberg passed over it as simply a ‘Street scene’.1 With a cluster of sails and awnings on the left and what seems to be the slope of a bridge in the middle (rather than a street receding in perspective), it may be a stray depiction of Venice, views of which occupy the first quarter of this sketchbook (see the Introduction), or perhaps an aspect of a river, canal or sea port encountered subsequently.
Cecilia Powell has commented on the relatively uneventful phase of Turner’s journey between leaving Bologna and reaching Rimini (folios 43 recto–60 verso; D14566–D14598; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 39a–56a) within which this drawing falls;2 for his overall route south-east between Bologna and Ancona, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.518.
2
See Powell 1984, pp.89–90, 465 note 98.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Urban Buildings with a Small Dome in the Distance, Sailing Boats and Figures ?near a Bridge, Possibly in Venice or an Adriatic Port 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-urban-buildings-with-a-small-dome-in-the-distance-sailing-r1186318, accessed 27 April 2025.