This talk recreates a visual tour of Italy in the company of J.M.W. Turner. By studying rarely seen drawings from his travel sketchbooks we will take a privileged look into the world of the artist, following in his footsteps through Venice, Rome, Tivoli and Naples. Through his most intimate and private sketches we will recapture the excitement and dangers ofnineteenth-century tourism, and the British love of Italian culture and history. In addition to on-the-spot sketches documenting where he went and what he saw, we will examine Turner’s artistic response to his Italian experiences, tracing the evolution of his ideas from preparatory studies to finished watercolours and oils.
Nicola Moorby is an art historian specialising in British art of the 19th and early 20th centuries. She is Curator of British Art, 1790-1850 at Tate Britain and guest curator of Turner’s Kingdom: Beauty, Birds and Beasts at Turner’s House in Twickenham. Her new book, Turner and Constable: Art, Life, Landscape is published by Yale University Press (2025).
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Photo credit: Yale Center for British Art