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 View of Nice, from Mont Alban 1828

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of Nice, from Mont Alban’ 1828
Folio 8 Verso:
View of Nice, from Mont Alban 1828
D21148
Turner Bequest CCXXXI 8a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 174 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Having arrived in Nice by boat from the sea, Turner left the city by road. This sketch, with the page turned horizontally, depicts a view from the slopes of Mont Alban to the east of Nice, looking back south-west across the port to the Mediterranean beyond.1 Visible in the centre of the composition is the hill known as the ‘Château’, while stretching along the horizon in the background is the headland of the Cap d’Antibes. The artist has vaguely indicated the abundant trees and foliage characterising the forest through which he was travelling. In the bottom-left corner of the page, he has also made a separate thumbnail study of the sixteenth-century Fort du Mont Alban, situated at the summit of the hill.2
Similar vistas from a slightly more distant vantage point can be found on folio 9 recto and verso (D21149 and D21150).

Nicola Moorby
March 2017

Revised by Hannah Kaspar
November 2024

1
See Guillaud, Alfrey, Wilton and others 1981, p.285; see also Roland Courtot, ‘Les Carnets de William Turner: Recherches d’identification et de localisation des dessins’, unpublished research notes, Université de Provence à Aix, April 2008, p.3, as ‘Nice’ (shared with former Tate cataloguer Nicola Moorby in email correspondence at that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).
2
Guillaud, Alfrey, Wilton and others1981, p.285.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of Nice, from Mont Alban 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/view-of-nice-from-mont-alban-r1209826, accessed 15 April 2025.