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

Rome: Part of the Extension to the Claudian Aqueduct, Known as the Arcus Neroniani

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0552: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) after John Robert Cozens (1752–97), Rome: Part of the Extension to the Claudian Aqueduct, Known as the Arcus Neroniani, 1794–97, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, 15.6 × 22.4 cm, 6 ⅛ × 8 ⅞ in. Private Collection.

Photo courtesy of Sotheby's (All Rights Reserved)

Artist's source: John Robert Cozens (1752–97), Baroque Arch and Roman Aqueduct Ruins, graphite on laid paper, 16.2 × 22.9 cm, 6 ⅜ × 9 in. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1977.14.4429).

Photo courtesy of Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (Public Domain)

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) after John Robert Cozens (1752-1797)
Title
  • Rome: Part of the Extension to the Claudian Aqueduct, Known as the Arcus Neroniani
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper
Dimensions
15.6 × 22.4 cm, 6 ⅛ × 8 ⅞ in
Object Type
Collaborations; Monro School Copy
Subject Terms
Italian View: Ancient Rome

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0552
Description Source(s)
Viewed in 2015

Provenance

Sotheby's, 31 March 1999, lot 47 as 'Roman Figures by a Gateway and Ruins' by Joseph Mallord William Turner, unsold; Sotheby's, 8 July 2015, lot 224 as 'Roman Figures by a Gateway and Ruins' by Joseph Mallord William Turner, £18,750

About this Work

This view of the ruins of the section of the Claudian Aqueduct known as the Arcus Neroniani was copied from a composition by John Robert Cozens (1752–97) (see the source image above). 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 The watercolour has hitherto been attributed to Turner alone, but, whilst his washes of colour obscure much of the pencil work, enough shows through to suggest Girtin’s involvement in its production, and there is no evidence that the work did not follow the same collaborative practice described by the artists themselves.

Monro’s sale 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 sketch with no indication of the subject, was almost certainly purchased at Cozens’ studio sale in July 1794 by Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827). 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 drawing on which this watercolour is based is inscribed ‘KK 32’, and, although it is not known what this stands for, the forty sketches marked in this way all seem to have been made by Cozens during his stay in and around Rome from November 1776 through to March 1779. None of the compositions in this group were realised as watercolours by Cozens, and this perhaps encouraged Monro to commission a finished work for his collection. The Cozens tracing and the finished watercolour are the same size, and it is therefore possible that Girtin simply traced his outlines from Cozens’ sketch. This is certainly the conclusion I take from overlaying images of the two works, which reveals a striking congruence between the forms of both the architecture and the vegetation.

Neither the Cozens sketch nor the Monro School watercolour is inscribed, and not surprisingly the subject has not hitherto been identified. However, the ruined arch of the aqueduct to the left features in another Monro School work (TG0541), and this can be recognised from other more general views from the Palatine Hill as being part of the extension to the Claudian Aqueduct, known as the Arcus Neroniani. The ornate Baroque archway in front of the ruins has not been identified and it may have been introduced by Cozens from another location to point up an ancient–modern contrast. The figures to the right in their coloured robes were transformed from what appear to be ancient statues in the drawing by Cozens.

1794 - 1797

Rome: Part of the Extension to the Claudian Aqueduct, Known as the Arcus Neroniani

TG0541

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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