drawing
- Museum number
- 1958,0712.421
- Description
-
The Colosseum, Rome; viewed from the outside with a flock of sheep in the foreground. 1820
Watercolour
- Production date
- 1820
- Dimensions
-
Height: 277 millimetres
-
Width: 293 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Sloan 1998
In August 1819 Turner finally set out from Calais to satisfy his long-cherished desire to see Italy. Arriving in Rome near the end of October, he filled over a dozen sketchbooks in that city alone, working up water- and bodycolour studies on grey-washed grounds in his lodgings in the evenings. Having thus filled his sketchbooks with reference material and armed himself with compositional studies suggestive of colour, atmosphere and mood, on his return Turner was able to begin to execute commissions arising from this journey, which had been of vital significance for his development as an artist. A series of watercolours were intended for Charles Heath's 'Picturesque Views in Italy'; another group were to appear much later as vignettes in Samuel Rogers's 'Italy', and eight carefully chosen subjects were to be worked up into watercolours for his favourite patron, Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall.
The paintings for Fawkes included four views of Rome, two city views and two studies of single buildings to represent the great achievements of Rome in modern and ancient times - 'St Peter's' and the 'Colosseum'. Turner may have delivered the latter, which is dated 1820, on his Christmas visit to Farnley in 1821. He had a great deal of reference material to draw on for this watercolour: in 1818, before he had even visited the city himself, he had worked up watercolours of Rome from James Hakewill's drawings made with the camera obscura¹ and during his own visit he drew the Colosseum from every possible angle in his sketchbook (TB CLXXXIX). For this particular watercolour, he eventually settled on a careful drawing he had made in pencil on paper prepared with grey wash, in which, he had rubbed out the highlights.² Turning lounging cattle into sprightly goats, angling the building and bringing it slightly forward to eliminate the distracting view into the distance on the right, Turner relied on his recollection of the blue sky and golden-pink tinge of the stones to make a perfect exterior companion to his view of the nave and aisles of the interior of 'St Peter's' (W 724): row upon row of arches radiate out from the centre of the Colosseum to complement perfectly the rows of arches moving into the heart of the basilica.
When he saw this watercolour at Farnley Hall in 1902, Armstrong noted that it was slightly faded;³ Finberg recorded its condition in his catalogue of the Fawkes collection in 1912 (pl. XIV), and it may have faded further before Lloyd acquired it fifteen years later.
1. Powell 1982, pp. 408-25.
2. f. 23; see Powell 1987, pp. 106-9.
3. p. 274.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1839 Leeds, no. 70
1902 Lawrie & Co., no.64
1911 Grafton Galleries, no.211
1928 Agnew's London, no.27
Manchester, no.46
1951 Agnew's, no.23
1975 BM, Turner in the BM, no.74
1998 May-Sept., BM, J.M.W.Turner: Lloyd Bequest, no.23
- Acquisition date
- 1958
- Acquisition notes
- UNDER THE TERMS OF THE BEQUEST, NONE OF THE PRINTS OR DRAWINGS BEQUEATHED BY R. W. LLOYD MAY BE LENT OUTSIDE THE BRITISH MUSEUM (Registration Numbers 1958,0712.318 to 3149).
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1958,0712.421
