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

With the page turned vertically, Turner has scrawled three lines of notes; the transcription here closely follows Finberg’s,1 although even the little of it that he felt able to decipher remains uncertain:

The final word is perhaps part of an address. The significance of the whole remains unclear, but may represent an afternoon’s appointments. Compare the even more obscure notes on folio 9 verso (D28800).

Technical notes:

This page is the verso of the sketchbook’s marbled front free endpaper, and is unusual in being numbered as the first in Finberg’s sequence for this sketchbook, presumably following John Ruskin’s existing red ink inscription. Normally the recto of the first leaf is numbered as such, but presumably the marbling precluded that here. The edges are heavily stained owing to their proximity to the leather overlaps inside the front cover.