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

This subject has traditionally been suggested as a coastal ‘Riviera’ view,1 likely in the South of France;2 while considering it in the context of Turner’s French tours, Lindsay Stainton noted that ‘the village shown here could well be somewhere along the coast between Nice and Genoa’,3 the Italian city situated roughly a hundred miles north-east of the French border.

Roland Courtot, a geographer who has drawn on his local knowledge to write on various aspects of Turner’s work in the South of France,4 has since made a detailed case study of the present work; after considering and comparing other possible sites, he has identified the subject as the Fortezza del Priamar at Savona, on the Mediterranean coast in the north-west of Italy, about thirty miles west of Genoa.5 Turner passed that way in 1828 as he travelled to Rome, and again perhaps in 1837; see the entry for Tate D33718 (Turner Bequest CCCXLI 39), a view of Genoa itself.6

Courtot has noted that Turner represented the fortress, begun in the 1540s and expanded in phases into the eighteenth century,7 from the south. The complex is shown with reasonable accuracy except in the omission of the long low building known as the Palazzo de la Sibilla which actually masks the approach to the bridge and gateway to the upper part from this side.8 Today the fortress is open to visitors; the ramparts overlook a railway and an extensive array of docks and warehouses within a reinforced sea wall, while the town beyond, barely indicated here, has seen much development.

Indeed, Courtot has noted the poetic licence taken with the setting in general even as it then appeared, as the beach actually runs straight, and the hills in the vicinity are much less dramatic. The scene likely synthesises impressions of French Riviera and Italian coastal landscapes and fortifications; as Courtot had previously written concerning the composition, ‘cette aquarelle serait alors non pas l’image d’un coin de la Riviera, mais l’image de “la” Riviera’9 (that is, not the representation of a particular corner of the Riviera, but of ‘The Riviera’).

Of other works in the present section, Tate D24706 and D36229 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 141, CCCLXIV 367) may show views in the vicinity. See also John Chu’s ‘South of France and Italy c.1820–41’ section for comparable coastal scenes from Turner Bequest section CCLIX.

The first cataloguer of the Turner Bequest, John Ruskin, described the work’s handling as ‘Fine, but a little hard and mannered.’10

Verso:

Blank; inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘[...]’ bottom right (number obscured); inscribed in pencil ‘20b’ right of centre; inscribed in pencil ‘CCLIX.140’ bottom centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCLIX – 140’ at centre.

Revised April 2018