Joseph Mallord William Turner View of Naples from the Hill below San Martino and Castel Sant'Elmo, with Castel Nuovo and Vesuvius 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 48 Verso:
View of Naples from the Hill below San Martino and Castel Sant’Elmo, with Castel Nuovo and Vesuvius 1819
D16003
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 46 a
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 46 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Red | B | W’ and ‘B Red C Collar W. BB’ beside sketches of soldiers, bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1899
John Ruskin, Catalogue of the Drawings and Sketches by J.M.W. Turner, R.A. at Present Exhibited in the National Gallery: Revised, and Cast into Progressive Groups, with Explanatory Notes: Third Edition, Revised and Illustrated, London 1899, p.19 , reproduced opposite.
1904
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, p.305 reproduced opposite as pl.XVII, ‘At Naples’.
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.552, as ‘Vesuvius from Naples. Reverse of do. [Exhibited drawings, No.604a, N.G.]’.
1920
D[ugald] S[utherland] MacColl, National Gallery, Millbank: Catalogue: Turner Collection, London 1920, p.85.
Turner made a number of panoramic sketches of Naples from certain elevated viewpoints across the city. This drawing depicts a vista looking east across the city towards the semi-circular sweep of the bay. The main focal point is the old port, identifiable from the lighthouse on the L-shaped Mole (or pier), and the adjacent fortress of Castel Nuovo. Dominating the background is the vast bulk of Vesuvius with its smoking cone-shapped crater and the adjacent lesser peak of Monte Somma. Turner’s viewpoint appears to be somewhere on the lower slopes of the Sant’Elmo/San Martino Hill, possibly in front of the monastic complex of Suor Orsola Benincasa (now the headquarters for the university of the same name on present-day Corso Vittorio Emanuele). The foreground includes studies of a number of figures including a pair of nuns in dark habits, and a couple of uniformed soldiers. A series of related views can be found on folios 48 and 49–50 (D16002 and D16004–D16006; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 46 and 47–48). The composition is also similar to a coloured study in the Naples: Rome C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16101; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 13).
The paper is discoloured owing to light exposure dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see folio 48 (D16002; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 46).
Nicola Moorby
July 2010
How to cite
Nicola Moorby, ‘View of Naples from the Hill below San Martino and Castel Sant’Elmo, with Castel Nuovo and Vesuvius 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www