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

The sketchbook’s original leather-bound covers are retained separately at Tate; they are in very poor condition. Either the leather spine split of its own accord owing to its deteriorating state or the two covers were separated roughly when they were discarded. The leather of one cover is split from the spine to the site of a lost clasp. The low-grade boards were evidently lined with white wove paper beneath the leather overlaps before the endpapers were pasted down, as most of one of these lining sheets survives in torn and abraded condition. Both boards are inscribed in pencil ‘CLIV(a)’. In 1909 Finberg described the book as ‘bound in dark brown leather, with one broken clasp. Leather warped as though it had been in water’.2 At what stage the book was rebound is not recorded, though it may have been in the 1930s when there was a general programme of restoration of the Turner Bequest sketchbooks transferred to the British Museum from the Tate Gallery following the 1928 flood. By that time this one may have suffered further damage, and its covers were evidently considered beyond repair.

As noted by Finberg, several pages have been torn out – at least one if not all by Turner himself. ‘Two leaves torn out’3 together between folios 9 and 10 (D12136, D12137) have left stubs up to 20 mm wide, and the similar profiles of the torn edges suggest they were removed in one go. The leaf ‘torn out between pp.13a–14’4 (D12144, D12145) was evidently removed before the landscape, inverted relative to the foliation, was drawn across the pages on each side, as the slight pencil work is carried across the stub itself. A ‘[l]eaf torn out’5 has left a stub up to 20 mm wide between folios 16 and 17 (D12147, D12148), while another ‘[l]eaf torn out’6 left a narrow, jagged stub between the notes on folios 27 verso and 28 recto (D12162, D12163; Turner Bequest CLIV a 26a, 27). The ‘[l]eaf torn out’7 between folios 47 verso and 48 recto (D12187, D12188; CLIV a 46a, 47) has left an irregular stub up to 20 mm wide. Finberg notes ‘[o]ne leaf torn out’8 between folios 58 verso and 59 recto (D12203, D12204; CLIV a 57a, 58), where there is an unaccessioned half page, some 60 mm wide (not accounted for in the concordance below), preceded by the inconspicuous and very narrow stub of another leaf. Lastly there is a ‘[l]eaf torn out’9 between folios 64 verso and 65 recto (D12212, D12213; CLIV a 63a, 64), leaving a jagged stub up to 30 mm wide; folio 65 is itself partly torn away, retaining a note on its verso (D12214; CLIV a 64a).

Apart from localised staining, the paper of folios 1–16 (D12124–D12147) and 70–78 (D12223–D12239; Turner Bequest CLIV a 69–77a) appears whiter than the pages between. Folios 17–69 (D12148–D12221; CLIV a 17–68) carry John Ruskin’s usual red numbers, smudged and faint in most cases, but the first and last few folios do not seem to carry ink numbering, or it has faded beyond legibility, except on folio 11 recto (D12139). The impression of a nib can just be made out at the corresponding corners of the first four folios.

A concordance follows to allow for the torn stub, drawn on but not recorded by Finberg, preceding folio 23: