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

Turner Bequest CCLVI

Sketchbook bound in boards with speckled buff oil paper covers, marbled edges, and document pockets on the inside covers
46 leaves of white laid and grey wove paper
Approximate size of page 158 x 104 mm
Watermarked ‘1822’ with crown and laurel design

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

This slim sketchbook bound in oil paper covers contains pencil studies of the coastal terrain on both sides of the English Channel and several sketches of the towns of Northern France. The volume lacks the kind of detailed architectural studies which often punctuate Turner sketchbooks of this date and type, and is comprised only of rapid notations. The artist worked mainly on the pages in the first half of the sketchbook as currently foliated and much of second half has been left blank. A pencil note by Turner on folio 14 verso (D24132; Turner Bequest CCLVI 13a) locates the scene depicted to Folkestone. This page along with drawings describing Calais, Beauvais and the local dress of Northern France give the sketchbook its title.

The volume has attracted limited attention and few attempts to secure a date for its contents. The drawings were certainly made after 1822, which is the date of the paper’s watermark. In his 1909 Inventory of the Turner Bequest, A.J. Finberg suggested a date of around 1830 presumably based on stylistic factors.1 The present catalogue adopts the 1826 dating tentatively ventured by Tate curator Ian Warrell in 1997.2 In this version of events, Turner used this sketchbook on the final leg of an autumn tour of Northern France which ended with a hasty journey from Paris back to England. Hence the fleeting glimpses of Beauvais, Calais and the coastline near Dover. The sketchbooks more securely linked to this tour are grouped into the present section for comparison.

The sketches of identifiable locations appear on the following folios:

Technical Note:

The lower right-hand quadrant of folio 43 recto (D24163; Turner Bequest 41a) was torn out before John Ruskin numbered the pages. As a consequence Ruskin appears to have missed the page initially and numbered it ‘41a’ on the torn edge once he had noticed the oversight. Folios 1 and 46 are flyleaves of light-grey wove paper. Neither the recto nor verso of folio 1 bears any mark by Turner so the leaf lacks a Ruskin number, a record in A.J. Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Turner Bequest3 and a Tate accession number. As a result of these factors, the overall sequence of the present foliation, the Tate accession numbers, and the Turner Bequest roman numerals are each out of step with the other. This concordance has been provided to clarify these discrepancies:

The top right-hand corner of the outside front cover is stamped and inscribed in pencil ‘CCLVI’. The upper centre is blind stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram. The top left-hand corner of the inside front cover is stamped ‘‘CCLVI’. Folio 1 verso bears several notes by Turner’s executors. In ink, Henry Scott Trimmer signed the page and left the note ‘No 364. | 16 leaves of very slight pencil | sketches. In pencil, Charles Lock Eastlake and John Prescott Knight left their initials. The page also bears the pencil note ‘CCLVI’ and is blind stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram.