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[Uploaded from Wikipedia: Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino. Click image to see larger version]
Here are some quotes from art critics who were Turner's contemporaries, writing on his Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino, which was recently sold for US$44.9 million at a Sothesby's auction.
From: Martin Butlin & Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, Evelyn Joll’s 1977 intro. Revised Edition, 1984) 2 vols. Pp 210-211
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Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino Exh. 1839 (Plate 355)
A large stone in the centre foreground is inscribed 'PONT [IFEX?] MAX.' The goats which are gambolling behind it are surely included as a recollection of Claude.--------------------------------------------
Exhibited with the following from Byron [from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage]:'The moon is up and yet it is not night,The same quotation was to be used again by Turner as a caption to his Approach to Venice. The first line is that of verse xxvii of Canto IV of Childe Harolds Pilgrimage but Turner has altered Byron's second line which should read:
The sun as yet divides the day with her'.'Sunset divides the sky with her - a sea'.[...]
At the R.A. [Royal Academy] the picture received mixed opinions, the most favourable appearing in the Art Union of 15 May which considered it 'A fine and forcible contrast to No. 66 [Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus]. The glory has departed. The eternal city, with its splendours - its stupendous temples, and its great men - all have become a mockery and a scorn. The plough has gone over its grandeurs, and weeds have grown in its high places.' Thackeray, writing under the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh in Fraser's Magazine for June, after praising the Temeraire [No. 377] admitted that Turner's 'other performances are for the most part quite incomprehensible to me.'
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