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

Apparently based on Tate D01096 (Turner Bequest XXXVI B), this wash drawing in the ‘Monro School’ idiom (see the relevant section of the present catalogue, c.1794–8) has been thought by Turner scholar David Hill to be a pupil’s drawing.1 This is possible: the work is fairly summary; but there is nothing intrinsically implausible about an attribution to Turner himself, and the presence of a ruled border round the image in D01096 suggests that it was envisaged as a subject for engraving, perhaps in one of John Walker’s pocket books (see Introduction to the Matlock sketchbook, Tate; Turner Bequest XIX) in the ‘Midlands 1794–1802’ section of this catalogue. A watercolour evidently derived from the present work, in the manner of Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and perhaps a copy after Girtin by John Henderson, Jnr (1797–1878), is in the British Museum, London (Henderson Bequest, 1878,1228.23).