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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Second Italian Tour 1828-9 > Marseilles to Genoa Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Nice, from the Sea 1828

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Nice, from the Sea’ 1828
Folio 7 Verso:
Nice, from the Sea 1828
D21146
Turner Bequest CCXXXI 7a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 174 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Like the views on the preceding pages, the geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has identified the subject of this sketch, with the page turned horizontally, as Nice seen from the sea.1 The city itself is barely indicated on the left, but more clearly delineated in the centre is the hill known as the ‘Château’, while on the right is the entrance to the port. Rising in the background are the mountains of the Alpes-maritimes. Turner has continued the topographical profile at the bottom of the page, concluding in the Cap Ferrat peninsula on the far right-hand side.
Similar sketches can be found on folio 6 verso and the recto of this leaf (D21144–D21145), while for a more detailed study within Nice itself see folio 8 recto opposite (D21147).

Nicola Moorby
March 2017

Revised by Hannah Kaspar
November 2024

1
Roland Courtot, ‘Les Carnets de William Turner: Recherches d’identification et de localisation des dessins’, unpublished research notes, Université de Provence à Aix, April 2008, p.3, as ‘Nice’ (shared with former Tate cataloguer Nicola Moorby in email correspondence at that date).

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Nice, from the Sea 1828’, catalogue entry, March 2017, revised by Hannah Kaspar, November 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2025, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/nice-from-the-sea-r1209824, accessed 15 April 2025.