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

The Bay of Baia, with Naples and Vesuvius in the Distance

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0657: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), after (?) John Robert Cozens (1752–97), The Bay of Baia, with Naples and Vesuvius in the Distance, 1794–97, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, on an early mount, 21.3 × 29.5 cm, 8 ⅜ × 11 ⅝ in. Tate, Turner Bequest CCCLXXIII, 51 (D36464).

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
  • The Bay of Baia, with Naples and Vesuvius in the Distance
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper, on an early mount
Dimensions
21.3 × 29.5 cm, 8 ⅜ × 11 ⅝ 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: Naples and Environs; Lake Scenery

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0657
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.1229 as 'Mountains beside lake, volcano in distance' by Thomas Girtin; Turner Online as by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin (Accessed 08/09/2022)

About this Work

This view of the Bay of Baia, with Naples and Vesuvius in the distance, 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 many of the Monro School drawings of Italian scenes, it has not been possible to trace the source of this view of the Bay of Baia, taken from a point below that employed in Baia Castle (TG0654). But, as was generally the case, it is likely to have been a sketch made by John Robert Cozens (1752–97) on one of his visits to Naples, either in 1777 or in 1782–83. None of the many views of the city and its adjacent coastline that are included in the seven sketchbooks of material that are associated with Cozens’ second visit to the Continent resemble this scene, so it is likely that Girtin worked from a lost sketch from the earlier, less well-documented trip. The auction of Cozens’ 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).2 The Bay of Baia, north of Naples, was a popular destination for British tourists and the artists who served them. The octagonal structure known as the Temple of Venus, which is visible to the left of this composition, was a particularly popular motif with Cozens and his contemporaries, and it appears in at least two other Monro School works as the central focus (TG0655 and TG0656).

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.1229; 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, and Girtin’s inventive and fluent hand is clearly apparent under Turner’s economical use of a simple palette of blues and greys. As Wilton has noted in the online catalogue of the Turner Bequest, the ‘handling of the washes is less assured here’ than in many cases (D36464). But, whilst this is undeniably true, I suspect that the sort of falling off of standards in the Monro School subjects seen here resulted from time pressures placed on Girtin and Turner, rather than indicating the intervention of other, anonymous hands in the work. Moreover, the poor quality of a given watercolour, in itself, does not indicate that it departed from the division of labour that the two artists themselves described to Farington in 1798.

1794 - 1797

Baia Castle

TG0654

1794 - 1797

The Temple of Venus at Baia

TG0655

1794 - 1797

The Temple of Venus at Baia

TG0656

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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