J.M.W. Turner. The sketching from nature practice in the Italian sketchbooks

The English landscape painter J.M.W. Turner based his artistic creativity on the accurate observation of the environment where he was immersed, translating it into quick and synthetic signs of graphite in the pocket sketchbooks, which he always carried with him, from adolescence to last days, during the London walks and on the seasonal trips on the Island and in Europe. This research systematises the iconographic and topographical data of the sketching from the nature in the 22 sketchbooks used during his first Italian tour (1819), organising them analytically in a Geo-Iconographic Information System, compared with the remarkable Turnerian literature. The gestures in handling the sketchbook and the pencil ‘to sketch from the nature’ are the most detailed results reached by the writer, thanks to the infographic analysis of the hundreds of original drawings.