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

The series of drawings on the inside front cover were made with the page turned vertically. As Finberg observed, each of the landscape sketches appears to depict a view of a town beside a river, although there are five separate drawings rather than four that he identifies.1 While two central studies sit together, the bottom and topmost scenes are separated off by horizontal pencil lines, with a fifth small sketch confined within a dashed off box towards top right. Annotations scatter the page, mostly repetitions of the number ‘3’ but also including an instance of elaboration in the form of a line of largely unidentifiable scrawl on the left above the centre.

The four most detailed drawings are variations on the same group of landmarks observed as Turner approaches them from the right. A distinctive structure with a vertical line of central markings for windows is present towards the middle of each composition, and behind this and to the right stands a tower. Starting with the drawing at the top, the arrangement draws closer as Turner moves down the page. He elaborates on and then excludes a bridge across the river on the left and in the bottom two drawings a pair of pointed spires emerges on the right hand side. In the final composition there are some complicated arches of what may be a second foreshortened bridge in the foreground.

This more complex bridge in the bottom sketch seems to appear again on folio 1 verso (D17208) opposite a distant view of Oxford on folio 2 recto (D17209). Later still, folio 2 verso is a scene of the Oxfordshire village of Sunningwell (D17210), indicating the trajectory of Turner’s journey. It seems likely that this sequence of sketches on the inside cover represents part of the same excursion, possibly illustrating a view of Oxford from across the Magdalen Bridge over the River Cherwell. Built in 1779, initially this bridge was the route into the city taken by coaches from London. It was widened in 1882–3 to designs which emulated the original masonry.2 According to a tentative suggestion by Finberg, Turner produced a very slight sketch of the Magdalen Bridge and Tower in 1802–3 in the Rhine, Strassburg and Oxford sketchbook (Tate D04756; Turner Bequest LXXVII 19a). However, as noted by David Blayney Brown in the catalogue entry for that page, this identification is ‘far from certain’. Presumed or identified views of Oxford and the surrounding area can be found in the pages that follow this one, on folios 1 recto and verso, 2 recto and verso, 5 recto, 17 recto, and then at the end of the sketchbook, on folios 87 verso and 88 recto (D17207–D17210, D17214, D17234, D17356–D17357).