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

On his southward journey to Naples from Rome, Turner passed through the countryside of the Alban Hills. He made a number of sketches of this picturesque part of the country, particularly of the volcanic crater lakes of Albano and Nemi. This study is part of a panoramic view looking east across Lake Albano with the Papal Palace at Castel Gandolfo dominating the western (right) shore. Dating from the seventeenth century, this villa and gardens built by Carlo Maderno was the summer residence of the Pope. This view looking up towards the walls was one frequently depicted by artists,1 and it is likely that Turner was familiar with a similar prospect by James Hakewill (1778–1843), his collaborator on the topographical publication, Picturesque Views in Italy (published 1820).2 An alternative vista of the Papal Palace can be seen on folio 2 (D15557). The drawing continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 2 verso (D15558) where the monastery of Palazzola and Monte Cavo beyond is visible on the other side of the lake.

Lake Albano was a popular subject for artists during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and Turner would have been particularly familiar with representations of it by John Robert Cozens (1752–1797) whose watercolours he had studied in his youth.3 It also appears as one of the notational pen-and-ink sketches after John ‘Warwick’ Smith (1749–1831) which Turner copied into the Italian Guide Book sketchbook prior to embarking on his first trip to Italy (see Tate D13968; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 20, third from top right). During his 1819 travels he made two sequences of swift outline studies recording the topography of the lake, particularly focusing on the distinctive outline of Castel Gandolfo on the western shore, see folios 4–5 (D15561–D15563), and also the Albano, Nemi, Rome sketchbook (Tate D15302–D15311, D15313–D15321, D15322–D15325; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 4–9, 10–15 and 16–17). These drawings later formed the basis for a large watercolour composition Lake Albano circa 1828 (private collection), commissioned for Charles Heath’s unrealised scheme for Picturesque Views in Italy but ultimately engraved for publication in The Keepsake 1829.4 Cecilia Powell has pointed out that Turner’s watercolour closely recalls a painting by Claude of the same subject, Pastoral Landscape with a View of Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo, 1639 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), a work which he viewed in the Barberini collection in Rome and made notes on in the Remarks (Italy) sketchbook (see Tate D16848 and D16869–70; Turner Bequest CXCIII 80 and CXCIII 95a–6).5