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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1813 > Chemistry and Apuleia Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscriptions by Turner: Monogram-Style Signatures; with ?Diagrams c.1813

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscriptions by Turner: Monogram-Style Signatures; with ?Diagrams’ c.1813 (Inside back cover of sketchbook)
Inside back cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
Inscriptions by Turner: Monogram-Style Signatures; with ?Diagrams c.1813
D40813
Pencil and pen and ink on white wove paper, 113 x 88 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘T[...]R | TR’ top left, and ‘TURNER | TURNER’ towards top centre, and in ink ‘TURNER’ centre left, ‘TURNER | TURNER’ below centre, ‘TURNER’ bottom left, and again bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As with the single rendering of his name on the recto of folio 68, the last leaf in the sketchbook (D09985), Turner’s prominent inscriptions appear to be doodles interlinking the letters of his surname in a curlicued semi-monogram, mostly with the vertical stroke of the ‘T’ held within the ‘U’, and the ‘E’ and ‘R’ combined. The playfulness of the exercise is emphasised by the scrolls drawn in round the teeth securing the cover’s clasp at the top centre, and the intermittent outlining of the irregular edge of the cover’s leather overlaps, visible through this endpaper.
There are also curves and more complex forms indicated in pencil, but their function is unclear. They may be one or more maps or plans, or another form of diagram. Finberg makes no mention of the page in his 1909 Inventory.1

Matthew Imms
April 2014

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.384.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscriptions by Turner: Monogram-Style Signatures; with ?Diagrams c.1813 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscriptions-by-turner-monogram-style-signatures-with-r1147942, accessed 29 November 2024.