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

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

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0717: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), after John Robert Cozens (1752–97), The Coast at Portici, with the Villa d'Elboeuf in the Foreground and the Harbour of Granatello Beyond, 1794–97, graphite and watercolour on paper, 17.8 × 26 cm, 7 × 10 ¼ in. Private Collection.

Photo courtesy of Paul Mellon Centre Photographic Archive, PA-F05206-0107 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Artist's source: John Robert Cozens (1752–97), View by the Sea at Portici, the Villa D'Elbeuf in the Foreground, the Granatello and the Mole in the Middle Distance, graphite on laid paper, 16.5 × 27 cm, 6 ½ × 10 ⅝ in. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1977.14.4572).

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
  • The Coast at Portici, with the Villa d'Elboeuf in the Foreground and the Harbour of Granatello Beyond
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions
17.8 × 26 cm, 7 × 10 ¼ in
Object Type
Collaborations; Monro School Copy
Subject Terms
Coasts and Shipping; Italian View: Naples and Environs

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0717
Description Source(s)
Auction Catalogue

Provenance

John Drinkwater; his sale, Christie’s, 16 March 1934, lot 38 as 'Old Buildings on the Coast' by Joseph Mallord William Turner; bought by 'Adams', £8 8s; The Ruskin Galleries, Birmingham, 1935; ... Christie's, 17 November 1981, lot 136 as 'On the Sea Side at Portici' by Joseph Mallord William Turner, £1,485; D. Hickmet; his sale, Sotheby's, 15 March 1984, lot 141 as 'On the Sea Side at Portici' by Joseph Mallord William Turner, £2,090

Bibliography

Bell and Girtin, 1935, p.58

About this Work

This view of the coast at Portici, with the fort and newly constructed harbour of Granatello prominent in the middle ground, 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

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 ‘at Portici – Septr – 6’ and ‘Granatello’, 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.256), 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.1975.5.27)), and it was presumably traced by Cozens because the books were retained by Beckford. Cozens arrived at the villa at Portici of the British envoy Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803) early in August and stayed there for a month. During this time, the artist made more than twenty sketches, which, in turn, provided the material for at least eight Monro School subjects, including views of the royal palace (TG0716) and other nearby villas (such as TG0715). The Villa d’Elboeuf was built in 1717, well before the king developed the harbour area of Portici.

The bulk of the Monro School copies sold at the patron’s posthumous sale in 1833 were attributed to Turner alone. Although many have since been accepted as the result of the joint efforts of Girtin and Turner, especially since the publication of Andrew Wilton’s pioneering article in 1984, others, as here, have remained under Turner’s name (Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23). The work is known only from a black and white image and it is consequently difficult to assess Girtin’s involvement in the work. All that can be said with any confidence is that there is nothing to suggest that it is anything other than a typical collaborative effort between Turner and Girtin.

1794 - 1797

Portici: The Royal Palace from the Park

TG0716

1794 - 1797

Portici: The Imperial Minister’s Villa, near the Harbour of Granatello

TG0715

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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