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

Terracina, on the Coast between Rome and Naples, with the Temple of Jupiter Anxur

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0649: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), after John Robert Cozens (1752–97), Terracina, on the Coast between Rome and Naples, with the Temple of Jupiter Anxur, 1794–97, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, on an early mount, 17 × 23.6 cm, 6 ¹¹⁄₁₆ × 9 ¼ in. Tate, Turner Bequest CCCLXXIV, 18 (D36496).

Photo courtesy of Tate (All Rights Reserved)

Artist's source: John Robert Cozens (1752–97), View from the Inn at Terracina, Between Rome and Naples, 1777, graphite on laid paper, 20.3 × 24.1 cm, 8 × 9 ½ in. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1977.14.4605).

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
  • Terracina, on the Coast between Rome and Naples, with the Temple of Jupiter Anxur
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper, on an early mount
Dimensions
17 × 23.6 cm, 6 ¹¹⁄₁₆ × 9 ¼ in
Mount Dimensions
36.8 × 48 cm, 14 ½ × 18 ⅞ in
Part of
Object Type
Collaborations; Monro School Copy
Subject Terms
Italian View: Naples and Environs

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0649
Description Source(s)
Viewed in November 2017

Provenance

Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833); his posthumous sale, Christie's, 28 June 1833, lot 78 as ‘Twenty-six sketches in Switzerland and Italy, by Turner, in blue and Indian ink, in a scrap-book’; bought by Thomas Griffith for Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), £10 10s; accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856

Bibliography

Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1232 as 'On the sea coast' by Thomas Girtin; Bell and Girtin, 1935, p.39; Turner Online as 'At Terracina' by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin (Accessed 08/09/2022)

About this Work

This view of the coastal settlement of Terracina, between Rome and Naples, with the Temple of Jupiter Anxur on the headland above, 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 79). The twenty-six 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

Monro’s posthumous sale, in 1833, contained only twenty or so sketches by John Robert Cozens (1752–97), 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 Monro School watercolour, a sketch inscribed by Cozens ‘Near Terracina between Rome & Naples’ (see the image above), was almost certainly purchased at the sale of ‘Mr COZENS’ 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 drawing on which this watercolour is based is dated October 1777, which provides crucial evidence that the artist visited Naples and the south of Italy on his first trip to Italy, whilst a second, similar sketch of Terracina (see source image TG0709), which was also realised as a Monro School watercolour (TG0709), was made in 1782 on Cozens’ return to the continent.

Terracina marked the boundary between the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples, and Cozens was no doubt required to break his journey south, giving him the opportunity to sketch the promontory with the Temple of Jupiter Anxur above and the Via Appia passing through a narrow passage cut into the rocks next to the sea. As if to emphasise the point, Cozens included a carriage and horse speeding ahead going south, and Girtin and Turner included this detail in their view as well, for once not having to invent a figure group to enhance the landscape’s appeal.

The album containing this 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.1232; Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23). Identifying the division of labour within Monro School drawings is considerably helped, as here, when the colour washes leave something of the pencil work showing through, though in this case this is far from substantial. Overlaying images of the Monro School watercolour and the Cozens sketch suggests that Girtin did little more than trace the general outlines of the simple composition. In general, I am more than happy to follow Wilton’s dual attribution of such works to the two young artists, but in this case the blocky application of dark areas over a lighter layer in the foreground to create semi-abstract patterns is more typical of Girtin’s style around 1796–97 and, although this is not as clear-cut as some examples, I suspect that Turner was not directly involved in the work’s production. These things are difficult to estimate precisely, but, given that making pencil outlines of landscape subjects must have taken less time than colouring them, Girtin would have had opportunities to contribute to the process of enhancing his own outlines if his attendance at Monro’s house matched Turner’s in terms of frequency. The 1833 sale acknowledged this by listing a significant number of ‘Italian views’ as being by Girtin alone as well as specifying that four of these were ‘after Cozens’ (Exhibitions: Christie’s, 1 July 1833, lot 108; Christie’s, 2 July 1833, lot 35).

Image Overlay

1794 - 1797

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

TG0709

1794 - 1797

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

TG0709

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).
  2. 2 A full record of the sale is available in the Documents section of the Archive (1794 – Item 1)

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