Modern Italy - The Pifferari

After Joseph Mallord William Turner (London, England, 1775 - 1851)

Mediummezzotint and etching on paper

ClassificationsPrints

DimensionsOverall: Height: 18.2 cm, Width: 25.8 cm

AcquisitionBequeathed in 1946 by Lady Troup.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG007753

Keywords

Townscape

About MeJ.M.W. Turner trained with the watercolourist Thomas Malton who gave him lessons in perspective in 1788 and the successive year he attended classes at the Royal Academy in London where he exhibited throughout all his life. Turner's trips across Europe were an important source of inspiration for his paintings and watercolours. The artist visited Italy twice in 1819 and 1828 and this experience signed the beginning of a new period for his art, characterised by the use of intense light and glowing colours, lasting in the 1840s.
This etching is a reproduction after Turner's oil painting Modern Italy-The Pifferari (Glasgow Art Gallery). The original picture reveals the artist's mastery in the use of light bright blue for the sky and the sheet of water in the centre of the composition and the gradation of yellow in the edges.
Turner painted the picture for the friend Rev. E. T. Daniell, a talented amateur artist. Daniell could only afford £200 to buy it and Turner agreed to lower his original price of £250. The affair dragged on and a year after the exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1838 the work was sent to an engraver to be reproduced, and remained with him for three years.
Munro, a Turner's friend and collector, had already bought the companion picture, Ancient Italy- Ovid banished from Rome from the Academy in 1838, and after Daniel's death he hoped to acquire also the other one. Turner hesitated saying that he wanted to keep the painting, but eventually he allowed Munro to buy it (John Gage, J.M.W. Turner, 1987).
Modern Italy-The Pifferari was engraved by W. Miller in 1842. Several letters from the correspondence between Turner and Miller are connected with Turner's proofs and Miller reproductions of Modern Italy. Turner reveals a keen attention to all the details of the engraving and seems especially concerned in the rendering of colours.