J.M.W. Turner and Naples: The Picturesque, Mythical and Mystical

J.M.W. Turner, The Old Harbour, Naples, 1818,

National Museums, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery

Joseph Mallord William Turner, consummate nineteenth century English master of landscape painting had a great affinity for travel, sojourning from his native London across Europe for inspiration. Judging by the prodigious output of work inspired by his travels, Turner seemingly held the Italianate landscape in high visual regard. He visited the peninsula no fewer than six times during the course of his life and produced a multitude of sketches, watercolors and oil paintings of Italy and Italian-based themes.

As is well known, Turner expertly depicted the differing landscapes of Venice and Rome in many notable works. But it was perhaps the region of Naples which he represented most intriguingly and in the most varied of compositions. The artist again and again turned to the Neapolitan landscape as inspiration for his imaginative endeavors in paint. Turner sought to capture the picturesque qualities of Naples and the beauty of its Bay, exploring in his pantings and drawings perhaps the most breathtaking of settings in Italy if not in all of Europe.

Turner made his first excursion from London to the Italian peninsula sometime in the late summer of 1819, remaining there until February of 1820. During this first stay in Italy, the artist visited Venice, Rome, Florence and Naples and presumably resided in each region for at least a number of weeks. As was always the case in his travels abroad, Turner made numerous landscape studies in both watercolor and pencil in his sketchbooks.

Turner was already forty years of age at the time of this journey and was already in the practice of visiting various European locations to study widely differing landscapes and seascapes for nearly two decades. One could easily picture Turner approaching Naples, his discerning eye immediately recognizing the Kingdom’s unique beauty. Now under the rule of the Bourbon King Ferdinand I which allowed for safe passage and lodging, Naples offered herself to the artist as a perfect muse, providing ample inspiration.

Turner’s had at least some familiarity with Naples before his first Italian visit. In the previous year of 1818, the artist was commissioned by the English architect James Hakewill to translate his sketches of Italy into the medium of watercolor. These watercolors would eventually be engraved and published in a series of prints titled A Picturesque Tour of Italy. A result of Turner’s effort can be seen in The Old Harbor, Naples of 1818. Though Turner had not seen Naples firsthand at this time, the resultant watercolor demonstrates Turner’s appreciation for the Italian picturesque, which he no doubt gained in his studies of many Italian old masterworks. Perhaps more importantly, The Old Harbor, Naples shows the artist’s excitement in anticipation of the trip he would make to that city the following year.

When Turner arrived in Naples, he began to work as only he could. Turner filled his days by visiting important sites and his sketchbooks with studies of them. Two sketchbook pages, both titled The Castell dell’Ovo, Naples, Early Morning with Capri in the Distance currently reside in the Tate collection. These exquisite watercolor studies show Turner’s expertise in depicting early morning light, with the ancient Castell dell’Ovo rising through the mist on the Gulf of Naples. Turner had perhaps been recounted with local stories of the medieval castle, where it was said that an egg, along with the bones of the poet Virgil, supported the structure deep below it’s location on the island of Megaride. It was believed that if the egg ever broke, the Castell dell’Orvo would tumble into the sea. Turner was undoubtedly taken by this bit of local folklore, setting about to work on his watercolors, creating two visual reminders of the tale for personal posterity.

J.M.W. Turner, The Castell dell’Ovo, Naples, Early Morning

with Capri in the Distance, 1819, The Tate Britain (Photo © Tate)

J.M.W. Turner, The Castell dell’Ovo, Naples, Early Morning

with Capri in the Distance, 1819, The Tate Britain (Photo © Tate)

Another picturesque watercolor from this trip is Naples from Capodimonte of 1819, presumably begun on location and completed some time later for patron Walter Fawkes, a friend of Turner’s and a member of British Parliament. Turner decided to represent the view from the hilled site of the Reggio di Capodimonte. This palazzo, commissioned in 1738 by King Charles VII of Naples and Sicily and built on the hill of Capodimonte housed the royal art collection inherited from the King’s mother, Elisabetta Farnese, who was the last descendant of the Ducal family of Parma.

J.M.W. Turner, Naples from Capodimonte, 1819,

The Tate Britain (Photo © Tate)

On an early summer morning of 1819, Turner situated himself high on the hill of Capodimonte and painted Naples framed on both sides by the Reggio di Capodimonte and surrounding structures. Once again utilizing watercolor to depict hazy morning light, Turner offers his viewer an enchanting sunlit vista, replete with the Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius in the far distance.

The looming Vesuvius indeed left a lasting impression on the artist. Turner ascended the volcano during his 1819 stay in Naples, but the volcano was dormant at the time. However, Turner’s memory of the mountain coupled with his incredible imagination inspired the 1820 watercolor Vesuvius in Eruption. In this watercolor, Turner’s eye for the Romantic sentiment of the sublime is amply evident. In this watercolor, the fiery Vesuvius explodes in the night sky, violently spewing smoke and ash, a spectacle which is reflected in the bay presented before the viewer in the middle distance.

J.M.W. Turner, Vesuvius in Eruption, 1817-1820,

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Another piece completed after Turner’s return from the continent is The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl, also in the Tate collection. In this oil painting, Turner illustrates the Ancient Greek myth of Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl. The story depicted by Turner has the Cumaean Sibyl, an ancient prophetess, asking the god Apollo to let her live for as many years as grains of sand she could grasp in her hand. Apollo grants her wish, but the Sibyl neglects to ask for perpetual youth. Sadly, in time she gradually fades away, and only her voice remains. Did Turner in middle age equate the myth of the sands of the Bay of Naples with his own mortality? Perhaps the painting is a personal acknowledgement of an inexorable turning point that occurred in the artist’s mid-career and the requisite introspection that accompanied it.

J.M.W. Turner, The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl,

before 1823, The Tate Britain (Photo © Tate)

Though never to return to Naples, Turner would repeatedly call upon its imagery, notably in such works as the late 1830’s oil painting titled Neapolitan Fisher Girls Surprised Bathing by Moonlight. Turner’s depiction of Neapolitan subject matter is presented to the viewer in a picturesque manner once again, albeit in a much more idealized fashion. Turner shows his fisher girls in the lower left quadrant of the painting, beneath an overarching tree, washing in the bay of Naples by night. The fisher girls’ boats sit on the shore in the right foreground, balancing his composition. The boats are backlit by a once again erupting Vesuvius in the distance while the fisher girls themselves are illuminated by moonlight central to the composition. These dual light sources create a subtle yet interesting interplay between lit and shaded objects on the same plane. When taken as a whole, a mystical light pervades this painting, a light often present in the late works of the master.

Working with alternating dense impasto and delicate glazing, the artist completed his Neapolitan Fisher Girls Surprised Bathing by Moonlight and showed it in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1840. Unfortunately, it was around this point in Turner’s career that his flights of fancy in paint began to earn him many detractors: critics unappreciative of the artist’s innovative and expressive use of oil paint. This criticism, which in turn negatively influenced the public’s opinion of the artist’s work would grow to become a constant source of annoyance for the elderly Turner.

J.M.W. Turner, Neapolitan Fisher Girls Surprised Bathing by Moonlight,

before 1840, The Huntington Library

In the 1840’s Turner experimented painting several works in a square or near-square format. This experimentation gave way to the artist’s most mystically oriented works, among them Shade and Darkness, Evening of the Deluge and Light, Colour (Goethe’s Theory), Morning After the Deluge, both exhibited in 1843 and Angel Standing in the Sun of 1846.

In the same year of 1846, Turner once more picked up the brush with Naples in mind again. This resulted in perhaps one of his most enigmatic oil paintings, Undine Giving the Ring to Masaniello, Fisherman of Naples. Also in a square format, this work can be counted among the aforementioned paintings for its mystical qualities.

In Undine Giving the Ring to Masaniello, Fisherman of Naples, Turner conflates the German fairy tale Undine, published in 1811 by author Friedrich de la Motte Fouque with the story of the revolt of 1647 in the Kingdom of Naples against the rule of Habsburg Spain. In the de la Motte Fouque’s tale, Undine, a water sprite, marries the knight Huldebrand for the purpose of gaining a soul. Turner paints Undine presenting a ring to her betrothed, but in the place of Huldebrand, Turner paints Masaniello, the Neapolitan fisherman who led the 1647 revolt.

J.M.W. Turner, Undine Giving the Ring to Masaniello,

Fisherman of Naples, 1845-1846 The Tate Britain

In a convention all his own, Turner found an affinity between the protagonists of the two stories, and Naples was now transformed into a mystical backdrop for the artist’s vision. In the painting, Masaniello is presented with and simultaneously enveloped by Undine’s ring, which appears as a nimbus of light centrally in the painting. Undine appears on the right of the nimbus and above the surrounding chaos of the deep. A multitude of figures emerge from this chaos which at once represent the 1647 revolt and, more mystically, the unseen forces lurking below the sea. All of this this takes place under the night sky, as Vesuvius erupts on the left and the coming morning illuminates the Bay of Naples on the right. An energetic brushwork characteristic of Turner’s late manner pulsates within the work, rendering it one of the more magical of the artist’s paintings.

The influence of Naples upon the work of Turner is subtle but nonetheless profound. It was in Naples that Turner discovered that undeniable picturesque beauty that has enchanted visitor and artist alike for centuries. Perhaps even more importantly, Turner also retained in Naples a sentiment of the ideal. In the years following his trip to Naples, this ideal played a part in transforming his overall vision. Turner’s genius lies not only in his masterful use of both oil and watercolor, but in the progression itself the artist makes from the picturesque, to the mythological and ultimately towards a mystical vision.

~ Pasquale De Davide