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

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

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0723: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), after John Robert Cozens (1752–97), The Torre Crestarella at Vietri sul Mare, with Salerno in the Distance, 1794–97, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, 15.5 × 22.9 cm, 6 ⅛ × 9 in. Private Collection.

Photo courtesy of Bridgeman Images, Christie's Images (All Rights Reserved)

Artist's source: John Robert Cozens (1752–97), The Coast Under Vietri, with Salerno in the Distance, graphite and varnish on laid paper, 17.1 × 24.4 cm, 6 ¾ × 8 ⅝ in. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1977.14.4588).

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 Torre Crestarella at Vietri sul Mare, with Salerno in the Distance
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper
Dimensions
15.5 × 22.9 cm, 6 ⅛ × 9 in
Object Type
Collaborations; Monro School Copy
Subject Terms
Italian View: Naples and Environs

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0723
Description Source(s)
Viewed in 2002

Provenance

Andrew Wyld and Anthony Reed, London; ... Christie's, 11 July 1989, lot 102 as 'The Coast under Vietri, Salerno in the Distance, the Castle seen above the Torre Crestarella' by Joseph Mallord William Turner, unsold; Sotheby's, 21 March 2002, lot 160 as by Joseph Mallord William Turner, unsold; private collection, UK; Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, 2012

Exhibition History

Andrew Wyld and Anthony Reed, 1977, no.18; Guy Peppiatt, London, 2012, no.20 as ’The Coast Under Vietri, Salerno Beyond’ by Joseph Mallord William Turner

Bibliography

Bell and Girtin, 1935, p.60

About this Work

This view of one of the defensive towers built along the Salerno coast, the distinctive Torre Crestarella at Vietri sul Mare, 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 Coast under Vietri, with Salerno in the Distance

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 Coast under Vietri – In the Distance Salerno – septr-23’, 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 on a second visit to Italy, in 1782 (Bell and Girtin, 1935, no.271), 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 third of seven sketchbooks that survive from the trip (The Whitworth, Manchester (D.1975.6.12)), and it was presumably traced by Cozens because the books were retained by Beckford. Cozens travelled to Salerno in the middle of September, when, following Beckford’s departure, he was finally free to explore the scenery along the coast, making twenty sketches, which ultimately formed the sources of nine or so Monro School subjects. The Torre Crestarella, built in the sixteenth century, was a popular subject with British landscape artists of the period, though few could resist adding a dramatic storm effect to enliven the view, as Cozens himself did in his watercolour (see figure 1), which puts the Monro School version in the shade.

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 in 1984, which established the joint authorship of many of the Monro School copies, this work was still listed as solely by Turner when it appeared on the art market in 2012 (Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23). This is not entirely surprising given that the watercolour has been quite heavily worked by Turner with a full palette of colours, which has effaced much, if not all, of Girtin’s characteristic pencil work. The question then is, if nothing of Girtin’s work remains visible, does it follow that this view departs from the general practice of the artists at Monro’s house (as they described to Farington in 1798)? Although the point can clearly never be proved, I suspect that Girtin was involved in the production of this work, albeit at the most basic level, tracing the outlines from Cozens’ sketch; it was Turner’s more onerous task to obscure the essentially mechanical task of replication and produce something that approximates to a finished work.

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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