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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner View of Nemi from Genzano above Lake Nemi 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 10 Recto:
View of Nemi from Genzano above Lake Nemi 1819
D15573
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 10
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘281’ bottom right and ‘10’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXIV 10’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s journey from Rome to Naples took him south through the Alban Hills and past the volcanic crater lake of Nemi. This sketch represents a view of the town of the same name, silhouetted on the slopes above the eastern shores of the lake. Turner’s viewpoint is looking across the water from the town of Genzano on the opposite side. Similar views can also be found on folio 10 (D15573) and in the Vatican Fragments sketchbook (Tate D15106 and D15249; Turner Bequest CLXXX 1a and 81). For further studies and a general discussion of Lake Nemi see folio 7 (D15567).
Eric Shanes has tentatively linked this sketch and folio 8 verso (D15570) with a colour beginning study of a lake and distant palaces (see Tate D36320; Turner Bequest CCCLXV 29).1

Nicola Moorby
April 2010

1
Shanes 1997, p.98.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of Nemi from Genzano above Lake Nemi 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2010, 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-view-of-nemi-from-genzano-above-lake-nemi-r1138035, accessed 18 December 2024.