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

The main drawing, a figure scene with adults gathered around a counter or stall with young children in voluminous bonnets in the foreground, is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. David Blayney Brown has described the subject as ‘clearly French’, presumably on account of the infants’ headgear, and notes Turner’s date (‘Sept 11 1845’) in relation to it,1 although the inscription seems rather to relate to the small view of a steamer at sea at the outer edge of the page, at right-angles to the main subject. There is another view of a steamer inside the front cover opposite (D41150); see the sketchbook’s Introduction for the many slight coastal views scattered through it.

The same date occurs on folio 78 verso (D35625); for its significance to the sketchbook as a whole, see the Introduction. Finberg’s reading of Turner’s main inscription as including the word ‘Espions’2 (the French for spies) seems unlikely, and the meaning of the preceding ‘H’ is also unclear.

At the gutter, again with the page turned vertically, is a hilly landscape with buildings, possibly inscribed ‘Bolg’ and ‘church’. The square silhouette may be the drum of the dome of the Basilique Notre-Dame, then under protracted construction; see under Tate D35430 (Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 21v) in the Boulogne sketchbook, used in the spring of 1845 see John Chu’s Introduction to the ‘Spring Tour of Northern France 1845’ section for the artist’s earlier visits to the area.

Folios 49 recto and 84 recto (D35573, D35636) also appear to be annotated with references to Boulogne.

Technical notes:

There is a narrow strip of bookbinder’s scrim extending onto the surface of the page at the gutter, showing that the sketchbook was recased, like many in the Turner Bequest, in the course of restoration at the British Museum following the 1928 Tate Gallery flood. There is slight staining at the edges from the leather overlaps under the front past-down opposite (D41150). The whole page has darkened, possibly as a result of water damage in the 1928 Tate flood.