This weekend we’re not off skiing, but seeking the mild winter in the Bay (or Gulf) of Naples, on the western coast of south Italy. This sweeps anti-clockwise through three-quarters of circle, from the island of Ischia in the north-west, through the great city of Naples in the north, past the slopes of Mount Vesuvius with the remains of Pompeii, to Sorrento in the south-east, and ends with the island of Capri in the south.

Over the centuries it has been visited frequently by artists, many of whom have overwintered here, and on the island of Capri. In this article I show landscape paintings starting from before the catastrophic destruction of the Roman city of Pompeii, and ending just before the birth of Impressionism. I conclude tomorrow with paintings well into the first decades of the twentieth century.

Although it took nearly 1500 years before Giorgione made one of the first ‘proper’ landscape paintings in modern European art, by the first century CE the Romans of Pompeii were only too pleased to see pure landscapes with no discernible narrative content on the walls of their villas.

Above is a port scene found as a fresco in Stabiae, near Pompeii, presumably showing that port at its height just before it was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Seventeen hundred years later in Naples, a pioneering Welsh artist created one of the gems now in the National Gallery in London.

Thomas Jones started making landscape sketches in oils in the 1770s. He worked in Italy from 1776 to 1782, around Rome and Naples, where he completed many plein air paintings in oils, including this tiny Wall in Naples from about 1782. He’s now recognised as being the father of Welsh painting, and one of the first painters to make oil sketches in front of the motif.

A little later, a local landscape painter Giovanni Battista Lusieri became one of the first to create true panoramas in his watercolour views of the city. For this View of the Bay of Naples, Looking Southwest from the Pizzofalcone Toward Capo di Posilippo from 1791 he joined several sheets of paper together to depict the northern shore of the bay.

JMW Turner’s second version of Lake Avernus: Aeneas and the Cumaean Sybil, dates from 1814 or 1815, and is true to the spirit of Claude’s earlier landscapes. This is a beautiful setting of Lake Avernus, near Pozzuoli, to the west of the city of Naples. In the distance is Baiae and the cliffs of Cape Miseno. The Sibyl is seen holding aloft a golden sprig rather than a bough, and Aeneas stands with his back to the viewer, as if he too is enjoying the view.

Shortly afterwards, the great French landscape artist Achille Etna Michallon painted this Sea View, Salerno (1822), showing the coast to the south-east of Naples.

At about the same time, the Bay became a focus of attention for JC Dahl and some of the German Romantic artists. Dahl had aroused the interest of Prince Christian Frederik of Denmark, who had become his patron and friend while he was still in Copenhagen. In 1820, the prince invited Dahl to join him in the Bay of Naples to paint there for him.

Dahl’s The Gulf of Naples. Moonlight (1820-21) is deeply influenced by Caspar David Friedrich, with its Rückenfigur wearing a top hat looking out to sea, fishing boats and nets, and the bright moonlight.

His visit to the Bay coincided with an active phase for the local volcano Vesuvius, during which JMW Turner visited and painted an eruption. Although Dahl was sufficiently enthused to make several oil sketches and take some to completion as finished works, he didn’t become as obsessed as others did.

In The Bay of Naples by Moonlight, painted the following year, he has used the warm red light from a more modest eruption to provide colour contrast, and enhance fine details of fishing nets in the foreground.

In 1828 Carl Gustav Carus visited the Bay, where he painted this wonderful view of Castel dell’Ovo in Naples. Given that it was made in oils over a pencil drawing on paper, this appears to have been painted in front of the motif.

Carus appears to have visited Naples on other occasions too. In about 1829-30, he stayed close to Castel dell’Ovo and framed a view from sea level in his Balcony Room with a View of the Bay of Naples (via Santa Lucia and the Castel dell’Ovo). The district of Santa Lucia consists of the waterfront buildings seen here between Carus’ accommodation and the Castel dell’Ovo.

JMW Turner returned to the same location and mythological theme in The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl in 1823. Apollo is on the left, with his lyre, and the dark-haired Sibyl has adopted an odd kneeling position. She’s holding some sand in the palm of her right hand, asking Apollo to grant her as many years of life as there are grains. Opposite the couple, on the other side of the path, under the trees, is a white rabbit.

When Ivan Aivazovsky was sponsored by the Imperial Academy to study in Europe, he travelled to Italy, where he visited Florence, Amalfi, and Sorrento, then stayed in Naples and Rome until 1842. During this period he painted many beautiful views of the Italian coast, and of Venice.

The Bay of Naples (1841) is a good example of Aivazovsky’s early paintings from Italy, in which he often sought the rich colours of sunrise and sunset. These aren’t large canvases, but he shows fine details such as the rivulets of water falling from the oars.

A later visitor was the accomplished British coastal painter Clarkson Frederick Stanfield.

This view of Ischia and the Castello d’Ischia, near Naples, from 1857, shows how subtle Stanfield could be when depicting the distant snow-capped mountains of Ischia.

This undated view of The Gulf of Pozzuoli appears to be one of his few coastal views in which there is not a breath of wind, and the sea is calm.