Joseph Mallord William Turner View of the Church of San Paolo at Albano 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Verso:
View of the Church of San Paolo at Albano 1819
D15344
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 26 a
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 26 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Wilson’ centre right of sketch, above buildings
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 ‘A tower, with ruins in foreground, lake in distance. On part of the distance is written “Wilson” ’.
1981
William Chubb, ‘Turner’s “Cicero at his Villa”’, Burlington Magazine, vol.123, July 1981, p.418.
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Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, pp.194 note 102, 195 note 107, 422, as ‘Albano: the Roman remains and the church of S. Maria della Rotonda.
1987
Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence, New Haven and London 1987, pp.[88] note 79, 176 note 18.
2008
Nicola Moorby, ‘Un tesoro italiano: i taccuini di Turner’, in James Hamilton, Nicola Moorby, Christopher Baker and others, Turner e l’Italia, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara 2008, pp.100, 105 note 14.
2009
Nicola Moorby, ‘An Italian Treasury: Turner’s sketchbooks’, in James Hamilton, Nicola Moorby, Christopher Baker and others, Turner & Italy, exhibition catalogue, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 2009, pp.113, 154–5 note 15.
The subject of this sketch is the campanile of the Church of San Paolo in Albano seen from the grounds of the convent of the Cappuccini. The clock on the tower appears to show that the time is approaching 1pm. Turner’s viewpoint is the same as that in folio 1 verso (D15297). The viewpoint also mirrors that of a watercolour by Richard Colt Hoare, View of Albano 1787 (Thomas Ashby Collection, Vatican Library) 1 and in a coloured aquatint by John Izard Middleton published in Grecian Remains in Italy: A Description of Cyclopian Walls and of Roman Antiquities, with Topographical and Picturesque Views of Ancient Latium, London 1812.2.
Despite Turner’s eagerness to find evidence of Claude Lorrain in the Italian landscape, the artist uppermost in his mind when exploring the Alban Hills seems to have been the Welsh landscape painter Richard Wilson (1713–1782). Turner inscribed his name several times in this sketchbook, see folios 15 verso, 28 verso and 58 verso (D15322, D15348 and D15407; Turner Bequest 57a).
The far right-hand side contains part of the sketch from the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 27 (D15345).
Nicola Moorby
May 2008
Reproduced in colour in Raymond Keaveney, Views of Rome from the Thomas Ashby Collection in the Vatican Library, exhibition catalogue, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1988, p.279.
Reproduced Charles R. Mack and Lyn Robertson (ed), The Roman Remains: John Izard Middleton’s Visual Souvenirs of 1820–1823 with Additional Views in Italy, France and Switzerland, South Carolina 1997, p.21. See also a drawing of a similar view by Charles Joseph Lecointe, see Francesco Petrucci e Susanna Marra, Vedute dei Colli Albani e di Roma dall’album di viaggio di Charles Joseph Lecointe (1824–1886), exhibition catalogue, Palazzo Chigi, Ariccia 2006, no.16, p.34, reproduced.
How to cite
Nicola Moorby, ‘View of the Church of San Paolo at Albano 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