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

Turner has used the inside front cover of this sketchbook horizontally to make a rough outline sketch in pencil of a small group of islands and coastline. The location is currently unidentified, although it probably represents somewhere in the Mediterranean, off the south coast of France. The same rock formations can be seen on folio 1 recto opposite (D21133).

Finberg transcribed Turner’s note at the outer edge as ‘No. 3. Marseilles to Genoa’, using the place names as sketchbook’s title,1 but the first half is now rubbed and faint, and the rest affected by staining at the edge of the page; there appear to be further illegible words immediately below. To the right, descending vertically relative to Turner’s drawing, is the customary endorsement by the Executors of the Turner Bequest, signed by Charles Turner and initialled by its assessors, John Prescott Knight and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, in ink ‘No 324 Contains | 69 leaves in Pencil | very slight | C Turner’ and in pencil ‘JPK’ and ‘C.L.E.’