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

This leaf has nine studies of a black servant, surely drawn from life. Four are quite detailed. A further study is on folio 5 of the sketchbook (D05356). These are the ‘failures in trying to catch the expression of a drunken negro’ noted by Ruskin in his endorsement inside the cover. A similar figure wearing white linen and a dark jacket appears in Turner’s unfinished painting Harvest Home (Tate N00562),1 where he is bringing bottles of wine or champagne for the gentleman seated in the left foreground.

As noted by Smiles, the model could be John Edward Doney, a servant of the Earl of Essex, Turner’s presumed client for Harvest Home, at his Cassiobury estate, the original setting of the picture (see Introduction to the sketchbook). Doney had been captured as a slave in the Gambia as a child and was brought via Virginia to England, where he served the Essex family from 1766. He died in 1809, aged about fifty-one, was buried on 8 September2 and either beforehand or afterwards in his memory, the Earl may have requested his inclusion in the picture. Essex influence also obtained for Doney an obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine and an encomium for his gravestone by the society poet William Spencer.3

However, another possibility might be that the servant worked for John Fuller at his Sussex estate, Rosehill Park, and was a later addition to the sketchbook. Turner visited Rosehill in 1810 probably after Somer Hill in Kent, of which a drawing appears on folio 19 (D05375), and Fuller owned extensive plantations in the Caribbean and many slaves. As also discussed in the Introduction, the black man along with a trio of figures drawn on folio 2 (D05352) seems to show Turner’s awareness of David Wilkie’s picture The Village Holiday (Tate N00122), which also includes a Negro, possibly studied from an American called Wilson. Wilkie’s picture was only begun in summer 1809. Interestingly, Fuller visited Wilkie on 19 April 1810, when the picture was in progress; see note to folio 2 (D05352).

In addition to the various studies of the servant, this leaf also has a slight continuation from folio 5 of a group of figures.