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Works Thomas Girtin and Joseph Mallord William Turner after (?) John Robert Cozens

Albano: The Ruins of a Mausoleum, Known as the Tomb of the Horatii and Curatii

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0615: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), after (?) John Robert Cozens (1752–97), Albano: The Ruins of a Mausoleum, Known as the Tomb of the Horatii and Curatii, 1794–97, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, on an early mount, 18 × 25.8 cm, 7 ⅛ × 10 ⅛ in. Tate, Turner Bequest CCCLXXIII, 27 (D36440).

Photo courtesy of Tate (All Rights Reserved)

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) after (?) John Robert Cozens (1752-1797)
Title
  • Albano: The Ruins of a Mausoleum, Known as the Tomb of the Horatii and Curatii
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper, on an early mount
Dimensions
18 × 25.8 cm, 7 ⅛ × 10 ⅛ in
Mount Dimensions
36.3 × 49.5 cm, 14 ¼ × 19 ½ in
Part of
Object Type
Collaborations; Monro School Copy
Subject Terms
Italian View: Ancient Ruins; Italian View: The Roman Campagna

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0615
Description Source(s)
Viewed in November 2017

Provenance

Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833); his posthumous sale, Christie's, 28 June 1833, lot 78 as ‘A book containing 62 interesting sketches in the neighbourhood of Rome and Naples, by Turner, in Indian ink and blue’; bought by Thomas Griffith on behalf of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), £21; accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856

Bibliography

Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1228 as 'Ruins of tomb' by Thomas Girtin; Turner Online as 'The Tomb of the Horatii and Curatii' by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin (Accessed 07/09/2022)

About this Work

This view, one of two of the well-known ruined mausoleum on the Via Appia near Albano (the other being TG0614), is mounted in an album of watercolours bought by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) at the posthumous sale of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833) (Exhibitions: Christie’s, 28 June 1833, lot 78). The sixty-four drawings were the outcome of a unique collaboration between Girtin and Turner working together at Monro’s London home at the Adelphi. Here the artists were employed across three winters, probably between 1794 and 1797, to make ‘finished drawings’ from the ‘Copies’ of the ‘outlines or unfinished drawings of Cozens’ and other artists, amateur and professional, either from Monro’s collection or lent for the purpose. As the two young artists later recalled, Girtin generally ‘drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’. ‘They went at 6 and staid till Ten’, which may account for the generally monochrome appearance of the works, and, as the diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) reported, Turner received ‘3s. 6d each night’, though ‘Girtin did not say what He had’ (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).1

As with the majority of the views of the Roman Campagna completed at Monro’s home, it has not been possible to trace the source of this view of the monument, which was popularly associated, somewhat implausibly, with the legendary sets of brothers who fought as champions for the king of Rome in his conflict with the Latin people of neighbouring Alba Longo. In general, Girtin and Turner worked from compositions by John Robert Cozens (1752–97) and, more specifically, from sketches and tracings that he made during or after his stay in Italy from November 1776 through to March 1779. Few of these survive, but the auction of the artist’s work held in July 1794 contained twenty-seven ‘books of sketches’ and many hundreds of drawings made on his travels, and, as Kim Sloan has argued, given that Monro’s posthumous sale included only a few sketches by Cozens, the patron must have borrowed the bulk of the material from which Girtin and Turner worked (Sloan and Joyner, 1993, pp.81–82). The distinctive form of the tomb, originally with five conical towers, combined with its legendary associations with the earliest days of the Roman empire, ensured its popularity as a subject with generations of British artists, amateur and professional, and Turner himself was to sketch the monument during his 1819 trip to Italy.

The album containing the drawing was sold in 1833 as the work of Turner, but the cataloguer of the Turner Bequest, Alexander Finberg, thought that Girtin alone was responsible for the watercolours, whilst more recently Andrew Wilton has established their joint authorship (Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1228; Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23). Identifying the division of labour within Monro School drawings is considerably helped, as here, when the colour washes leave much of the pencil work showing through. An architectural subject generally requires a more detailed underdrawing than a landscape, and in this case Girtin’s inventive and fluent hand is clearly apparent under Turner’s unusually slight use of a restricted palette of blues and greys.

1794 - 1797

Albano: A Mausoleum, Known as the Tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii

TG0614

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

Footnotes

  1. 1 The full diary entry, giving crucial details of the artists’ work at Monro’s house, is transcribed in the Documents section of the Archive (1798 – Item 2).

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