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

The binding is similar to that of the somewhat smaller Yorkshire 3 sketchbook. It may be that only one original cover survives. The front is stained and battered, as one might expect, whereas the back cover is clean and may be a replacement. The Plymouth Hamoaze sketchbook (Tate D09218–D09481; D40579–D40581; D40583; D41231; Turner Bequest CXXXI) is similarly stamped, but with ‘J M W Turner’. Turner himself presumably did this, one would assume when he first acquired the book.

The sketchbook is now bound in four quires amounting to forty-one folios, but each quire presumably originally consisted of twelve folios, making a total of forty-eight. Seven leaves, therefore, appear to be missing. The original pagination is unclear. The numbering given by Finberg corresponds to numbers written on the leaves in red ink, perhaps by John Ruskin. Finberg noted ‘When found the covers only contained 35 leaves, all of which were blank except pp.7, 8, 9 & 10. Pages 36–41 appear to have once formed part of the book. Mr Frank Short also possesses a study in colour of a peat stream, which I believe once belonged to this book. Other leaves were in the possession of the Late Mr J.E. Taylor.’

It is worth asking why the first six folios of the book as presented now, and as previously found by Finberg, are blank. It seems hard to envisage a block of four pages of pencil sketches not connected to any other work in the book, as seems implied by the condition in which Finberg found it. It is clear that leaves have been removed following folio 1 verso (D09017), 6 verso (D41389) and 9 verso (D09025 verso), and it is possible that sketches and watercolour studies were originally more widely distributed through the book.

The watermarks are aligned on the portrait axis, either at the top or the bottom of the sheet. Assuming that the watermark was in the centre, this would suggest that the vertical dimension of the original sheets from which the book has been made was at least 920 mm, and the horizontal dimension at least three times 285 mm, or at least 855 mm. This must have been close to the maximum sheet size available. The sheets appear to have been divided into three and folded in the centre, probably in gatherings of six sheets to make twelve folios, and these then bound in four gatherings.

In the 1909 Inventory Finberg noted some pages in private collections. Since these can never have formed part of the Turner Bequest, the book must have been broken up in Turner’s lifetime. The best material had all been removed, for, as Finberg explains, the book when he found it consisted of just four pencil sketches together with thirty-five blank pages. He found six loose leaves that had been exhibited in Turner Bequest selections by John Ruskin or Ralph Wornum and others during the later nineteenth century, and surmised their relationship to this book. Finberg does not seem to have had any conclusive evidence for this – he says only that he ‘believed’ in the connection – but the paper type, size and subject matter fit perfectly, and there is no reason to question his judgement. There is no record, however, whether the exhibited folios were still attached to the sketchbook when it came into the Turner Bequest, and in reconnecting them with the rest of the book Finberg had no means of judging where they might have been placed in the original sequence. In the event they were bound in at the back. Arthur Mayger Hind’s inscription (on a piece of modern white wove paper, 285 x 460 mm, attached to the inside of the present front cover) states that the rebinding took place in 1935 and suggests that the back cover was made up at that time.

Finberg identified a ‘study in colour of a peat stream’ then in the collection of Frank Short, which he believed had once belonged to this book. This pencil and watercolour study (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut)16 measures 286 x 457 mm, very close to the 285 x 460 mm given here, and Finberg’s connection seems entirely convincing. The study formed the basis of a finished watercolour, On the Washburn (also Yale Center for British Art). The subject and spirit of both sketch and finished work seem particularly close to the sketch on folio 41 (D09057) and its related watercolour, On the Washburn, under Folly Hall (British Museum, London).17 The finished watercolour at Yale has a kingfisher in the foreground as a foil to the heron in the British Museum composition.

Finberg also mentions ‘other leaves’ in the collection of John Edward Taylor, recording that On the Washburn now at Yale was given by Taylor to Short,18 but beyond this there appears to be no clear record of any other leaves from this sketchbook that originate in the Taylor collection.

There is no evidence as to when or by whom any of these pages were separated from the sketchbook. It seems unlikely that Turner sold any in their own right in view of the very limited market for sketches in his lifetime. It is possible that he gave some to friends, for there are known instances of Turner parting with informal material in a personal context. An alternative scenario is that the sketches were somehow separated from the rest of the Bequest. It is probable, for example, that there was quite a lot of material left at Cheyne Walk, in the Chelsea house in which he shared his last years with Sophia Booth and in which he died. Some of this seems early to have found its way into the hands of a few interested parties, such as Ruskin.

Folio 41 (D09057) is followed by an unnumbered folio, not catalogued by Finberg. It appears to be a similar type of paper to the rest of the book, but might date to the 1935 rebinding. Both sides are blank, except for an inscription on the verso by an unknown hand in pencil ‘2’, bottom right.