Sorrento: Bay of Naples

Collins's Sorrento: Bay of Naples from 1841 was painted during his Italian tour, which — like similar journeys by Turner, Callcott, and other British painters — provided a stock of Mediterranean subjects that could be worked up into exhibition paintings for years afterward. The Bay of Naples, with Vesuvius in the distance and the rocky coastline of the Sorrento peninsula, was one of the iconic Grand Tour landscapes that British painters had been depicting since the eighteenth century. Collins's Italian landscapes combined his established skill in marine and coastal painting with the new experience of Mediterranean light, producing work that was more polished and atmospheric than his British coastal scenes.

Collins captures the brilliance of Mediterranean light with warm, luminous tones quite different from his English coastal paintings. The azure bay and dramatic coastline are rendered with vivid color and atmospheric perspective, while the foreground figures and vegetation provide scale and narrative interest. The palette is warmer and more saturated than his northern work.