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

The other side of this sheet (D33908; Turner Bequest CCCXLI 203) is an 1840 sketch of Rolandseck on the River Rhine. Unusually for a blank face of a separate sheet, this side was also numbered in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory,1 likely to clearly distinguish it from other sections of what seems to have then still been a continuous larger sheet with several drawings on each side, as discussed in the technical notes below.

Technical notes:

There is some irregular pale brown staining.

In discussing one of the 1840 River Mosel subjects in this subsection (Tate D28998; Turner Bequest CCXCII 50), Cecilia Powell has noted that it ‘originally formed part of the same sheet as eight others of the same size which bear pencil drawings of the Rhine on both recto and verso ... (TB CCCXLI 194–209 [Tate D33899–D33914, of which D33903, D33904 and D33906 are blank]). The sheet is watermarked BE&S / 1829.’1 Apparently indicating that they were still joined in 1909, Finberg noted the ‘following numbers, 194–209, form [sic] part of one large sheet folded into small sections.’2

Powell has noted the many sheets of grey 1829 Bally, Ellen and Steart paper used on Turner’s 1840 tour, neatly torn as eighths or sixteenths of the overall sheet, with dimensions of around 190 x 280 or 140 x 190 mm, and variously worked with pencil, watercolour and gouache; see the technical notes in the overall Introduction for others.3