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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1813 > Plymouth, Hamoaze Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscriptions by Turner: The Artist's Name and Financial Calculations 1813

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  • Inside front cover of sketchbook
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscriptions by Turner: The Artist's Name and Financial Calculations’ 1813 (Inside front cover of sketchbook)
Inside front cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Front Cover:
Inscriptions by Turner: The Artist’s Name and Financial Calculations 1813
D40579
Pencil on white wove paper, 157 x 95 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with calculations towards top left (see main catalogue entry)
Stamped in black ‘J M W Turner’ towards top left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Below the stamped name discussed below, the top half of the page is taken up with the following calculations:
L.        100
              70
            100
              30
            300
            500       John’s
            500
          1300
              20
       26000
The ‘L’ (i.e. ‘£’) apparently indicates a financial calculation, though the significance of the two-part sum and its multiplication to a very large figure is unknown. The significance of ‘John’s’ is also unclear, unless it has to do with Ambrose Johns [sic], the Plymouth artist who was one of Turner’s hosts there in 1813 (see the Introduction to the tour).
Turner’s name has been imperfectly stamped, with two attempts, fading to the left and overlapping to the right. There is a crisper impression at the back of the book on folio 278 verso (D09481; CXXXI 189a), where an asterisk is evident between the ‘J’ and ‘M’. The stamp was presumably applied by the artist as an experimental way of marking his property; the sketchbooks in the Bequest rarely bear his name in any form. The front cover of the Large Farnley sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CXXVIII) has a stamped ‘J M W T’ at its centre. The initials there appear to have been made with the same stamp, without the lower-case letters of the surname.

Matthew Imms
April 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscriptions by Turner: The Artist’s Name and Financial Calculations 1813 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscriptions-by-turner-the-artists-name-and-financial-r1147944, accessed 17 July 2024.