J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Finberg’s assumption that this is a ‘Design for a figure subject’1 seems likely, although its precise significance is obscure. A figure in a long, dark dress or robes, possibly with a ruff, stands on the right, perhaps beside a high table, with at least two less defined figures towards the left. It is feasible to read the forms to the right of the main figure as a sailing boat in the distance, or they may indicate objects on the table.

The occasion might be some event from Tudor or Stuart history of the type Turner occasionally attempted, such as the painting Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, and Dorothy Percy’s Visit to their Father Lord Percy, when under Attainder upon the Supposition of his being concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, exhibited in 1831 (Tate N00515).2 Compare the even more uncertain figure subjects on folios 4 recto and 6 recto (D17997, D18000). The other possibility is that this is a copy or variation on the work of another artist, as yet unidentified.