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

The drawing is difficult to make out, with houses to the left of centre apparently climbing a hill, and a group of low buildings at bottom centre which may be part of the same scene or elsewhere. They seem out of scale with the first group, and can be read as extending towards the bottom left corner. If there are two separate scenes, the steep slopes indicated to the right of centre could be part of either. It may be that the houses ascending on the left are the same as those descending in the sketch on folio 2 recto opposite (D08364).

Turner’s inscription is resistant to clear interpretation. Finberg’s ‘Purdiwick’ seems unlikely as it does not correlate with any obvious place name. The scene on folio 9 verso (D08379) is inscribed ‘Anckerwick’ or a close variation, indicating Ankerwycke in Buckinghamshire, on Turner’s route west from London, and the word here may be the same, preceded by an arrow pointing upwards. Whether there is any connection between the drawing(s) on the present page and the Ankerwycke area is unclear.

Technical notes:

Peter Bower reproduces most of the leaf as a look-through in transmitted light as an example of the watermarks on the book’s endpapers (see the introduction to the sketchbook).1 The ink inscription on the recto (D08362) has bled through in places on the right.