- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) after John Robert Cozens (1752-1797)
- Title
-
- Portici: The Imperial Minister's Villa, near the Harbour of Granatello
- Date
- 1794 - 1797
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on wove paper
- Dimensions
- 16 × 22.2 cm, 6 ¼ × 8 ¾ in
- Inscription
'W Turner' lower left, not by the artist
- Object Type
- Collaborations; Monro School Copy
- Subject Terms
- Italian View: Naples and Environs
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG0715
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in September 2023
Provenance
Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833); his posthumous sale, Christie's, 2 July 1833, lot 133 as 'The minister's villa at Portici, Cardinal Spinelli's palace, &c. 3' by 'Turner'; bought by 'Hixon', £4 8s; ... 'Bowater Collection, no.6' (according to a label on the back); property of a lady; Sotheby's, 11 July 1985, lot 140 as by Joseph Mallord William Turner, unsold; Thos. Agnew & Sons, 1986 (stock no.47483)
Exhibition History
Untraced exhibition or sale, no.58 as 'An Italian Villa' by Joseph Mallord William Turner; Agnew’s, 1986, no.19 as by Joseph Mallord William Turner
Place depicted
Other entries in Monro School Copies:
Italian Views after Drawings by John Robert Cozens Made on the Second Italian Trip, 1782–83

The Temple of Venus at Baia
Private Collection

Entering the Tyrol: Unidentified Buildings amongst Wooded Hills
Tate, London

An Unidentified Fortress: Entering the Tyrol Region
Private Collection

A View on the River Inn, in the Tyrol
Tate, London

Innsbruck: St Anna's Column on Maria-Theresien Street
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

A Tree-Lined Valley, near Innsbruck
Private Collection

A Church Tower in the Valley of the Isarco, near Sterzing, in the Tyrol
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

The Euganean Hills, Seen from the Walls of Padua
Tate, London

Part of Padua, Seen from the Walls
Private Collection

The Abbey of Santa Giustina at Padua
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

The View from Mirabello, the Villa of Count Algarotti in the Euganean Hills
Private Collection

A Convent on Monte della Madonna in the Euganean Hills
Tate, London

Fano, on the Adriatic Coast
Private Collection

Terracina: The View from the Inn, with the Temple of Jupiter Anxur
Tate, London

Naples: The Villa Belvedere, Seen from Sir William Hamilton's Villa at Posillipo
Private Collection

Naples: The View from Sir William Hamilton's Villa at Portici
Private Collection

Portici: Mounts Somma and Vesuvius, from the Myrtle Plantation at Sir William Hamilton’s Villa
Tate, London

Naples: Solimena’s Villa and Pine Trees
Private Collection

Portici: The Fortress in the Royal Park, Looking towards Mounts Somma and Vesuvius
Tate, London

Portici: The Imperial Minister's Villa, near the Harbour of Granatello
Private Collection

Portici: The View from Sir William Hamilton's Villa, with Vesuvius in the Distance
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Portici: The Royal Palace, from the Park
Tate, London

The Coast at Portici, with the Villa d'Elboeuf in the Foreground and the Harbour of Granatello Beyond
Private Collection

The Coast at Salerno, with Arechi Castle Overlooking the Town
Private Collection

The View from Salerno, Looking towards Vietri sul Mare
Tate, London

An Unidentified Villa in a Valley near Vietri sul Mare
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Salerno: An Ancient Cypress in the Garden of the Franciscan Convent
Tate, London

The Coast at Vietri sul Mare, from near Salerno
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The Torre Crestarella at Vietri sul Mare, with Salerno in the Distance
Private Collection

The Cantilena Convent, near Vietri sul Mare
Tate, London

The Cantilena Convent, near Vietri sul Mare
Private Collection

The Convent of San Francesco at Cava de' Tirreni
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

Naples: The Fifteenth-Century City Walls, with the Dome of Santa Caterina a Formiello
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

View from the Road Leading to the Scuola di Virgilio, Showing Nisida, the Islands of Ischia and Procida, and the Promontory of Miseno
Private Collection, Norfolk

The Bay of Porto Paone, a Flooded Crater in the Islet of Nisida
Private Collection

Ancient Ruins on the Coast near the Point of Posillipo
Tate, London

Naples: The View from an Enclosed Road at Posillipo
Tate, London

Posillipo: The Palazzo di Roccella on the Shore
Private Collection

The Amphitheatre at Capua
Tate, London

A Ferry Crossing a River, on the Road between Eboli and Paestum
Tate, London

The View towards Salerno from the Road to Eboli
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Naples: Castel Sant'Elmo
Tate, London

The Royal Park at Astroni
Private Collection

Lake Agnano, Seen from Astroni
Private Collection

Naples: An Unidentified Convent, with Vesuvius in the Distance
Tate, London

Naples: A Range of Convents near Capodimonte, Including the Chinese College
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester

The Vanvitelli Aqueduct, near Caserta
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart

The Royal Palace at Caserta, Seen from the Road to the Vanvitelli Aqueduct
Private Collection

The Convent of Santa Lucia, near Caserta
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

The Convent of Santa Lucia, near Caserta
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Ancient Ruins near the River Garigliano, Gaeta in the Distance
Private Collection

Florence: The Palazzo Vecchio, Seen from the Cascine Park
Tate, London

Florence: The Convent of Monte Oliveto, from the Banks of the Arno
Horne Museum, Florence

Florence: The Convent of Monte Oliveto, from the Banks of the Arno
Private Collection

A Villa on the Banks of the River Arno, Known as the Villa Salviati
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Building amongst Trees, on the River Arno near Florence
Sphinx Fine Art, London

A View on the River Arno, with a Tower on a Hill
Tate, London

Florence: The Palazzo Vecchio from the Boboli Gardens, with Fiesole in the Distance
Harrow School, London

Florence: The View from the Boboli Gardens across the Valley of the Arno
Private Collection

An Unidentified Villa, between Florence and Bologna
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

A Wooded Shoreline on Lake Maggiore
Tate, London

Angera: The Borromeo Castle Overlooking Lake Maggiore
Tate, London

The Castle of Arona on Lake Maggiore
Private Collection

Lake Maggiore, from the Shore
Private Collection

Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore
Private Collection

Lake Maggiore, from Isola Bella
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Distant View of the Grande Chartreuse
Private Collection

Buildings on a Promontory on the Coast at Posillipo
Private Collection

The Marmore Falls, near Terni
Private Collection

A Narrow Gorge Leading to the Grande Chartreuse
Private Collection

Florence: The View from the Grand Duke's Garden
Private Collection
Footnotes
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About this Work
This view of a seafront villa at Granatello, the port of Portici, near Naples, was copied from a composition by John Robert Cozens (1752–97) (see source image TG0715). It was produced at the home of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), where Girtin and his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) 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’. The majority of the resulting watercolours saw the two artists engaged in a unique collaboration; as they later recalled, Girtin ‘drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’. ‘They went at 6 and staid till Ten’ 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
Monro’s posthumous sale, in 1833, contained only twenty or so sketches by Cozens, so the patron must have borrowed the majority of the ‘outlines or unfinished drawings’ copied by Girtin and Turner. In this case, the source of the watercolour, a simple outline inscribed ‘The Imperial minister’s Villa near the Granatello – Portici – August 28’, was almost certainly purchased at Cozens’ studio sale in July 1794 by Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827).2 As Kim Sloan has noted, Beaumont mounted ‘215 “tracings” or drawings on oiled paper’ in an album that he presumably lent to Monro, and it was from this collection, now at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, that the two young artists produced more than fifty watercolours (Sloan and Joyner, 1993, pp.89–91). The source drawing was traced by Cozens himself from an on-the-spot sketch he made in 1782 on a second visit to Italy (Bell and Girtin, 1935, no.248), when the artist travelled with his patron William Beckford (1760–1844) and stayed in the Naples area for four months. The sketch is contained in the second of seven sketchbooks that survive from the trip (The Whitworth, Manchester (D.1975.5.19)), and it was presumably traced by Cozens because the books were retained by Beckford. The villa, situated close to the port of Portici, was one of a number of residences built for foreign envoys and courtiers who needed access to the new royal palace, and these included Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803), the British envoy, with whom Beckford and his party resided in August 1782. It was from here that Cozens explored the area around Herculaneum, at the foot of Vesuvius, and the sketches he made there ultimately resulted in at least eight Monro School subjects.
The bulk of the works sold at Monro’s posthumous sale in 1833 were attributed to Turner alone, but, despite the pioneering article published by Andrew Wilton that established the joint authorship of many of the Monro School copies, this work was still listed as solely by Turner in 1986 when it last appeared on the art market (Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23). This is not entirely surprising given that the watercolour has been quite heavily worked with a full palette of colours, which has effaced much of the pencil work. Arguably, just enough of Girtin's inventive touches are still apparent, particularly in the building, to point to his involvement in its production, albeit at the most basic level, copying the outlines from a Cozens tracing; it was Turner’s more onerous task to obscure the essentially mechanical practice of replication and produce something that approximates to a finished work. In this case it must be said that Turner has not been altogether successful as the structural logic of the building and its relation to the wall in front has broken down and the perspective in a band to the right of the area of the drawing where the paper has been left untouched is uncertain if not confusing. However, looking again at the perfunctory Cozens tracing from which Girtin worked the problem appears to lie with the ambiguous source material, and after finally viewing the work I am happy to put aside doubts about the attribution of the colouring to Turner. Ironically, the inscription of ‘W Turner’ in the lower left corner is more of a hindrance as far as the attribution is concerned as I strongly suspect that it was added later and it is not in the artist’s hand. None of the four hundred or so Monro School drawings that have a claim to be the result of a collaboration between Girtin and Turner has an authentic signature and there is no reason to believe that this might be the exception.
A poor-quality copy of this composition by an anonymous artist appeared at auction in 2022 (Eastbourne Auctions, 16 March 2022, lot 981) and again on the art market in 2023 (see figure 1). It is inscribed ’T Girtin’ in the lower left corner, though it is no more credible than the similarly placed ‘Turner’ signature. I suspect that the copy was made by a family member working prior to the posthumous sale of the bulk of Dr Monro’s collection in 1833 and that it acquired the spurious ‘Girtin’ inscription even later. The style of the watercolour closely resembles that of a set of copies of Turner/Girtin collaborations which were probably made in the early 1830s by Alexander Monro (1802–44). These were recorded in the 1930s by Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) in a series of sketches now in the Girtin Archive and they resurfaced in a sale in 2017 (Lacy Scott & Knight, 11 March 2017, lot 1464). These copies were not included in the 1833 Monro sale and were that part of the family collection that passed through the hands of a descendant, May Le Geyt (d.1942) and she or another member of the Monro family may have inherited this work.
1794 - 1797
Portici: The Imperial Minister’s Villa, near the Harbour of Granatello
TG0715