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

With the page turned horizontally, the main subject is a single-masted cargo boat, presumably observed in Venice, the subject of almost all the topographical sketches in this book. Finberg described it as ‘laden with bales’,1 although the details are rendered too slightly to be certain of this. Turner has supplemented the drawing with notes of blue and red elements.

Towards the gutter below there are irregular forms which may be the outlines of buildings, the other way up. These inconspicuous elements are partly overwritten by Turner’s executors Charles Turner, John Prescott Knight and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake in ink ‘No 352. | Contains 67 leaves | Pencil sketches, most on both sides | C Turner’ and in pencil ‘JPK’ and ‘C.L.E.’; this endorsement was inscribed with the page turned vertically in line with the sketchbook’s foliation.

Technical notes:

There is a greenish stain at the top centre exuded from the green leather loop secured between this paste-down and the paper-covered board of the front cover. There seem to have been two similar loops at the corners of the corresponding rear paste-down (D41120), so that the book could have been securely closed by threading a pencil through all three, but the other two have been neatly cut out. Compare the three loops on the contemporary Trieste, Graz and Danube sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCXCIX), which have all been partly cut away, leaving projecting stubs.