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

Finberg doubted that the handwriting of the financial note was Turner’s1 but it seems most likely to be his. By the turn of the century he was beginning to take an interest in property and was looking after John Danby’s widow and children in a house in Marylebone; this note seems to relate to a more impersonal exercise in landlord/tenant relations. For the Danby family see the Introduction to the contemporary Colour Bill sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest LXIII) and the entry for inside the front cover of that book (Tate D40806).

Below Turner’s inscription is the sketchbook’s endorsement by the Executors of the Turner Bequest, Henry Scott Trimmer, Charles Lock Eastlake and John Prescott Knight, in ink ‘N^o 389 – | 6 Leaves of Pencil sketches – | very slight | H S Trimmer’ and in pencil ‘C.L.E.’ and ‘JPK’.