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

At the top of this inside cover are studies of five men and women in a variety of tall or broad, shallow hats and dirndl-style combinations of puffed sleeves and broad skirts. These traditional costumes were doubtless observed during a stop on Turner’s return journey from Venice though the Alps up to Augsburg, as set out in the sketchbook’s Introduction.

On earlier tours, Turner occasionally reserved a sketchbook for detailed figure studies; compare for example Tate D04810 (Turner Bequest LXXVIII 13) among numerous examples in the 1802 Swiss Figures book. By this stage such exercises were relatively uncommon, but there are a few scattered through this book, showing small-scale figures either separately or incidentally within topographical views; see folios 20 verso, 24 recto, 25 verso, 42 verso, 43 recto, 63 verso and 76 recto (D31636, D31643, D31646, D31680–D31681, D31721, D31744). Of these, the last is the most sustained, with various figure studies and horses and carts with extensive annotations including the adjective ‘Tyrolese’, also used on D31636.

It is unclear whether the mountain skyline immediately above the figures is to place them in a specific context, a pictorial device, or an existing sketch, which appears continuous with the landscape forms on folio 100 verso opposite (D41111). The loose marks below the figures here also continue to or from there. Over half of the pages in this book comprise relatively slight sketches from Turner’s homeward route north through the valleys of the Alps via Trento, Bolzano (Bozen) and Innsbruck. As set out in the Introduction, although his overall itinerary is clear from many identified subjects, they were are not drawn in a single sequence, making the rugged scenes between them difficult to place.

Towards the bottom left, inverted relative to the figure studies, is the usual endorsement by the Executors of the Turner Bequest, Henry Scott Trimmer, John Prescott Knight and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, in ink ‘N^o 401. | 93 pages of | Pencil Sketches | H.S. Trimmer’ and in pencil ‘JPK’ and ‘C.L.E.’

Technical notes:

The support is the low-grade card cover of the sketchbook (see the overall technical notes), with raw overlaps from the greenish paste-paper outer cover (of the sort normally hidden by a paste-down) around the free edges.

The free ends of a green ribbon loop, threaded through a slit from the outer cover, are covered by a small, irregular piece of what appears to be modern white wove paper pasted in towards the bottom right, presumably to prevent rubbing and staining from the ribbon’s green dye, which has nevertheless stained the paper patch itself. The stubs of two corresponding free ribbon ties remain threaded through the front cover.