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

Near the gutter towards the bottom right is an inconspicuous pencil sketch or diagram, presumably by Turner. Read the other way up it might represent a square tower, or it could be an element of a plan or an architectural detail.

Across the top there is the usual endorsement by the Executors of the Turner Bequest, Henry Scott Trimmer, Charles Turner, John Prescott Knight and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, in ink ‘N^o 241. Containing | 92 Leaves – Pencil Sketches | H.S. Trimmer | C Turner’ and in pencil ‘C.L.E.’ and ‘JPK’.

Technical notes:

The support is the low-grade card cover of the sketchbook (see its overall technical notes), with overlaps from the mottled grey paste-paper outer cover evident around the top and bottom edges.

The technically similar Venice up to Trento sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCCXII), which Turner used immediately after this one, has a folding flap extending 57 mm from the fore-edge, folded twice to protect the page block and extend about a third of the way across the back cover. A similar flap was likely cut away freehand in this instance, leaving a slightly irregular, raw edge. Stubs of two green ribbon ties are threaded through slits at the centre and lower left. The Venice up to Trento book has a single corresponding ribbon loop on the back cover, but there is no sign of one here; either a loop was integral with the missing flap in this case, or the two ribbons were simply intended to be wrapped opposite ways around the book and tied to secure it.