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

Several accounts have been noted by Turner, as follows. In ink, running vertically inside the outer edge of the cover:

In pencil, below upper edge:

Finally, in pencil at the bottom, ‘Rolles | Rose & Crown’.

These expenses must relate to a trip to Oxford, probably late in 1802 or during the following year, which also occasioned the various drawings of the city and scenery in the Thames Valley in this sketchbook (see Introduction). Further accounts, of expenses at Newbury, are noted inside the back cover (D40794).

Colin Harrison assumes Turner’s dealings with Mr Williams over a picture and print to be ‘buying rather than selling’, doubtless because the other accounts relate to travel expenses. Mr Williams may be the same one to whom Turner sent his respects in a letter of 1800 to the Oxford-based artist William Delamotte (National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth). With the letter, John Gage publishes an entry from Pigot’s Dictionary (1823–4) for a John Williams, of ‘Printsellers, Carvers and Gilders & Picture-frame Makers’ at St Mary Hall-Lane, Oxford. His wife is presumably the ‘Mrs Williams’ listed alongside Delamotte as taking prints of the Shipwreck in 1805 (Shipwreck (1) sketchbook, Tate D05377; Turner Bequest LXXXVII 2), while Turner is recorded as giving a watercolour, dated 1800, of Iffley Mill, Oxford to ‘Williams the Engraver, at whose house Turner was staying in Oxford’.1 A further visit could account for the Oxford subjects in this sketchbook. It was perhaps during this visit that Turner sold his picture Kilgarran Castle on the Twyvey, Hazy Sunrise, Previous to a Sultry Day (The National Trust), which had been shown at the Royal Academy in 1799, to Delamotte for 30 guineas.2