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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and French ... > Holland, Meuse and Cologne Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Title of Sketchbook 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Label on Spine:
Inscription by Turner: Title of Sketchbook 1825
D41011
Ink on red-brown leather spine, 15 x 122 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘MEUSE’ at centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s single-word inscription gives the name of the River Meuse in its French form. As the Maas and its distributaries, he encountered it at two points on the 1825 tour: near the Dutch coast around Rotterdam (see under folio 52 verso; D19483), and later well inland at Liège in Belgium and not far downstream at Maastricht in the Netherlands (see under folios 23 verso and 22 verso respectively; D19442, D19440).
As discussed in the Introductions to the sketchbook and tour, between those points the artist had meanwhile travelled up the Rhine to Cologne in Germany (see under folio 31 verso; D19457). Also somewhat arbitrarily, Ruskin simply used ‘Rhine’ to label the book’s contents,1 while Finberg devised the more inclusive ‘Holland, Meuse, and Cologne’2 which, minus the second comma, remains its current title.

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.662.
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Title of Sketchbook 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2020, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-title-of-sketchbook-r1202890, accessed 20 May 2024.