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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Brighton and Copies from Wilson 1796-7 > Wilson Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Number and Title of Sketchbook c.1797

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Front Cover:
Inscription by Turner: Number and Title of Sketchbook c.1797
D40762
Ink on white wove paper label, 60 x 23 mm laid on green vellum sketchbook cover, 115 x 94 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘84 Studies for Pictures | [cop]ies of Wilson’ on label, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg’s use of the word ‘back’1 normally indicates the spine of a sketchbook, suggesting that Turner’s label was pasted there in 1909, and perhaps became detached before being pasted to the front cover instead, possibly after the 1928 Thames flood; the other surviving labels of this type remain on the spines.
In the absence of specific evidence, the inscription is dated here to about 1797 in line with the subjects in the sketchbook, although David Hill has suggested that Turner probably added the spine labels during a general review of his sketchbooks in about 1821 or 1822,2 later revising this to the second half of 1824.3

Matthew Imms
August 2014

1
Finberg 1909, vol.I, p.80.
2
See David Hill, ‘The Landscape of Imagination and the Sense of Place: Turner’s Sketching Practice’ in Maurice Guillaud, Nicholas Alfrey, Andrew Wilton and others, Turner en France, exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris 1981, pp.143, 147 note 34.
3
See David Hill, Turner on the Thames: River Journeys in the Year 1805, New Haven and London 1993, p.176 note 79.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Number and Title of Sketchbook c.1797 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-number-and-title-of-sketchbook-r1149808, accessed 21 November 2024.