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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Isle of Wight 1827 > Windsor and Cowes, Isle of Wight ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Draft of a Letter ?1827

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of a Letter’ ?1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 67 Recto:
Inscription by Turner: Draft of a Letter ?1827
D20698
Turner Bequest CCXXVI 64
Pencil on white wove paper, 192 x 112 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Give my love to Miss Wickham | Hopes that windows are now | fully squared and seen through | in Perspective. | JMWT’ at top
Stamped in black ‘CCXXVI – 64’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The inscription, made in the outer half with the page turned vertically, appears to be a draft of part of a note or letter. ‘Miss Wickham’ remains unidentified, but Anthony Bailey has speculated that she was a friend of Julia Bennet, by then Lady Gordon (1775–1867),1 whom Turner had tutored in 1797 through her copying his watercolours (including Tate D00667; Turner Bequest XXVII F).2 In 1826 he exhibited a painting, View from the Terrace of a Villa at Niton, Isle of Wight (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston),3 commissioned by the Gordons and based on one of her own sketches, and there was apparently further direct contact during Turner’s visit to the island in 1827,4 if not before (see the overall Introduction to the present Isle of Wight section).
Bailey considered it ‘dismal that [Turner] felt the need to write a trial version of such a message’;5 but rather than a sign of Turner’s supposed awkwardness as a correspondent it is perhaps more by way of fondly troubling to concoct a gallant yet seemingly spontaneous pleasantry.
1
Bailey 1997, p.184.
2
See Evelyn Joll, ‘Gordon, Sir Willoughby and Lady’ in Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.128.
3
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.144 no.234, pl.240 (colour).
4
See Joll 2001, p.129.
5
Bailey 1997, p.184.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
November 2015

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of a Letter ?1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-draft-of-a-letter-r1183340, accessed 10 February 2025.