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

Four otherwise unrelated sketchbooks are grouped together here owing to their containing manuscript notes relating to Turner’s Liber Studiorum series of landscape engravings, conceived in 1806 and published between 1807 and 1819. They do not relate to particular tours, but they do include a wide variety of sketches including topographical material, as well as miscellaneous notes; the Introductions to the sketchbooks address these aspects. For a comprehensive discussion of the Liber Studiorum, see the present author’s Introduction to the Turner Bequest watercolour studies for it in this catalogue (‘Liber Studiorum c.1806–24’); the significance of the notes contained in these four sketchbooks is discussed in a wider context there, with full references to the standard literature. The pages relevant to the Liber are: Finance: Tate D08321; Turner Bequest CXXII 25; and a separate sheet of calculations: D40900; Turner Bequest CXXII (4) verso Liber Notes (1): ...