Joseph Mallord William TurnerBritish, 1775–1851Palestrina - Composition
May one see it?
Unknown
The National Gallery
London, United Kingdom
The owner is known; whether it is on view today is not.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
Palestrina - Composition is an 1828 landscape painting by the British artist J.M.W. Turner featuring a view of the town of Palestrina in Lazio, east of Rome. On the left, beyond the bridge, the buildings slope along the hilltop while the right features an avenue of trees with grazing sheep.
Turner travelled to Italy that year for his second major visit. While in Rome this is one of several paintings Turner exhibited in his studio. The work was then displayed at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1830 at Somerset House in London. Turner envisioned the work as one that would interest the aristocratic art collector the Earl of Egremont for his country estate Petworth House. In the event Egremont did not purchase it and the picture was acquired a number of years later by the whaling magnate Elhanan Bicknell
Read on
Today the painting is in the collection of the Tate Britain, having been bequeathed in 1958.
Particulars
- Accession number
- NG6283
In the catalog
Sources
- Wikidata
- Image: The National Gallery — J. M. W. Turner · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Meanwhile, in the life of Joseph Mallord William Turner
The whole life1820s
Print series for publishers
In the 1820s he worked on several topographical print commissions: “Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England” (1814–1826) and “The Rivers of England” (1822–1826) for the Cooke brothers, “Picturesque Views in England and Wales” (1824–1838) for Charles Heath and “The Ports of England” (1825–1828) for Thomas Lupton.
1829
The death of his father
His father, who had lived with him for thirty years and worked as an assistant in his studio, died in 1829; the loss strongly affected Turner, who began to suffer fits of depression afterwards, and he finally abandoned his own gallery.
1829
Paris, Normandy and Brittany
In the twenty-year period from 1821 to 1844 he visited several European countries, studying the old masters and taking long hikes into the countryside: in 1829 Paris, Normandy and Brittany, and three years later Paris for the second time.
1830–1840s
Criticism in the 1830s–1840s and Ruskin’s defence
His innovative works, bordering on abstraction, gave him a reputation for madness: the Victorian public preferred realism and sentimentality, and Queen Victoria refused to knight him. John Ruskin came to his defence, calling him “the greatest artist of all time”.
