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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Number and Title of Sketchbook c.1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Label on Spine:
Inscription by Turner: Number and Title of Sketchbook c.1819
D40893
Ink on white wove paper, 17 x 60 mm laid on leather sketchbook spine, 20 x 119 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘[?9] Venice to Ancona’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Ian Warrell has noted how Turner organised his sketchbooks from the 1819–20 Italian tour with paper spine labels and marking ‘the outer edges of the pages of his standard size books with numbers indicating the sequence in which they had been used, suggesting that he perhaps stowed this core group in a box for frequent reference’.1 In this case, ‘4’ is marked the top edge of the page block, while this label appears to be numbered ‘9’, although it is somewhat rubbed, and could possibly be another ‘4’, which would place it more logically in the tour’s topographical sequence, particularly as Finberg recorded the same number on the subsequently lost label for the Small Roman Colour Studies sketchbook2 (Tate; Turner Bequest CXC).3

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Warrell, p.15.
2
See Finberg 1909, I, p.564.
3
See Warrell 2014, p.234.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Number and Title of Sketchbook c.1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-number-and-title-of-sketchbook-r1186221, accessed 17 May 2024.