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

Like its companion, On a Lee Shore (1), this little sketchbook seems to have been made by Turner himself from a larger sheet of paper which he prepared with a grey-blue wash. Finberg recorded that the book was ‘without covers’ when he listed it, while noting the parchment label ‘on [the] back’5 (usually indicating the spine), of which a fragment survives on the verso of folio 8 (D03993). The book had presumably been disbound to enable John Ruskin to extract the first two leaves (D03985, D03986) for exhibition at the National Gallery, but may never have had a cover; see the Cows sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest LXII), which is of similar construction.

Finberg noted the watermark as ‘– 1799’,6 but this is not readily observable; compare the ‘Hayes & Wise | 1799’ watermark of On a Lee Shore (1). The pages have now been rebound in Finberg’s order, tipped onto modern stubs of a matching colour.

Both this book and On a Lee Shore (1) have single sheets of paper incorporated into their modern fly-leaves which were kept with the books from the 1940s, noting requests by students in the British Museum Print Room to handle them, in most instances on the same occasions. In this case the following is inscribed in black ink: ‘LXVIII. Seen by students on the following dates:’; and in pencil: ‘AO Popham 30. iv. 47 | K.B. Critchlow 10^th October 1958. | KB Critchlow 16 Spt. 1961 | FR. Heathcote 7/9/66. | G. Wilkinson 7/4/71 | G ROD 25/8/71 | R. Guillaume 7/8/72 | G. Christeller 4/10/72 | M. Munsterberg 4/12/77 | [?Ch Putny]’ 30/10/82. The last name is in reverse.

Among the names here are: ‘A.O. Popham’, perhaps Arthur Ewart Popham, Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings from 1945 to 1954 (where the works on paper in the Turner Bequest were kept following the Thames flood of January 1928 until 1986) or his daughter,7 the art historian and editor Anne Olivier Popham (Mrs Quentin Bell from 1952), the subject of a 1937–8 portrait by the Euston Road School artist Graham Bell (Tate N05461); ‘K.B. Critchlow’, presumably the artist and author Keith Barry Critchlow (born 1933); Gerald Wilkinson, who published selections from the drawings in the Turner Bequest in three volumes in 1972–5;8 and Marjorie Munsterberg, whose 1979 PhD thesis was on the ‘Development of Turner’s Critical Reputation between 1800 and 1819’ (Columbia University, New York).9 The final name in both lists is rather oddly given in mirror-writing; it may be that of the drawings dealer Christopher Powney, then based in London.