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

The pages in this book have been examined under a microscope by paper conservator Helen Evans and described as ‘the same’ paper as those in the Stonehenge sketchbook, or at least showing a ‘close similarity’.2

Apparently as part of a new campaign of cataloguing after the Turner Bequest drawings were transferred to the British Museum following the Tate flood of 1928, the Turner scholar C.F. Bell compiled four pages of MS notes which have been tipped into a British Museum copy of Finberg’s Inventory now held at Tate Britain,3 describing the Cornwall and Devon and Stonehenge sketchbooks as respectively ‘CXXV^a’ and ‘CXXV^B’, and calling them both ‘Sk. Bk. S.122’.4 His introductory notes, headed ‘“Bude, Clovelly, Ilfracombe, Tintagel to Bude” Sketch Book’, derived from the inscription on folio 1 recto (D41275), are as follows:

The ‘former foliation’ appears on the versos, usually in the form of a two-tier pencil number, the upper of which is usually about 100 greater than the lower; a few are not numbered and some only have a single number, in the range 100 to 106 (see the concordance below). One of the inscriptions is initialled ‘E.F.’, suggesting that they are all in the hand of Edwin Fagg, the Tate Gallery’s Official Lecturer, who had supervised immediate restoration work and compiled the damage report after the 1928 Tate flood.6 It is possible that these drawings came to light at that time. The numbers’ significance is unclear, as they do not follow Turner’s route between the sites depicted. They are of the complex type that John Ruskin sometimes used without explanation in his early cataloguing work on the Bequest. They may originally have been applied by him, following his own system or indicating a previous location or sequence (for which see further discussion below), and copied by Fagg with occasional qualifying remarks such as ‘no [i.e. number] from centre of mount’.

What seems to be an original Turner Bequest schedule number noted by Bell, ‘S.122’, does not appear in Finberg’s 1909 appendix ‘List of Sketch Books Arranged according to the Old Schedule Numbers’, suggesting that it was one of the ‘parcels of loose miscellaneous drawings which have now been rearranged according to subjects and dates’.7 However, as already noted, Finberg did not record these particular sheets in 1909. He was aware of them by 1929 when he referred briefly to sketches of St Michael’s Mount in what he called ‘the “North Devon” Sketch Book, Turner Bequest, CXXV (a)’.8 He continued to work on Turner until his death in 1939, and compiled an independent, undated manuscript listing of this and the Stonehenge sketchbook,9 ‘only produced after my Invty. was printed’,10 tipped into a copy of his published Inventory held at Tate Britain and headed:

Again, schedule number ‘71’ does not appear in the 1909 appendix, and conflicts with Bell’s ‘S.122’. The cross-reference regarding the ‘W[ater]M[ark]’ is to the sheet Finberg numbered as page 34, the present folio 84 recto (D41366), where the embossed ‘Bath Vellum’ stamp is particularly clear.

At the end of his published entries for the Ivy Bridge to Penzance sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CXXV), Finberg had noted two ‘extra leaves’, numbering them CXXV 50 and 51: ‘The book to which they belong does not appear to be in the collection. They are therefore placed here for convenience of reference.’12 Respectively D08941 and D08942 (and its verso, D41299), the two leaves have since been bound as folios 22 and 23 of the present sketchbook, between CXXV a 21 and 24 (D41296 and D41300). Tate accession numbers D41297 and D41298 were initially applied to folios 22 and 23 recto as part of the sequence for Turner Bequest CXXV a, but these redundant numbers were cancelled and those from the CXXV a sequence retained. Finberg had transcribed a note by Turner on the verso of the back flyleaf of the Corfe to Dartmouth sketchbook (Tate D41522) as ‘Lands End in Book with N. Devⁿ’.13 In his manuscript, he assumes this to be a reference both to these two leaves and to the present ‘sketchbook’, hence labelling it ‘North Devon’ when more of its contents were rediscovered.

All the sheets have glue stains and sometimes slight abrasions at their corners, indicating previous mounting, and all are slightly wrinkled in a similar way, as if exposed to damp, as discussed below. As late as 1974, in one of his illustrated selections from the Bequest, Gerald Wilkinson noted (as had Bell) that this and the Stonehenge book ‘cannot be called sketchbooks since they are all separate sheets.’14 The photographs Wilkinson reproduces are carefully trimmed to show what appear to be loose sheets with slightly wavy edges. The process of tipping onto stubs and binding of leaves in a plain cloth casing as a ‘sketchbook’ therefore appears to postdate 1974. There is a small ‘35’ inscribed in pencil on the verso of the stub supporting the last leaf, though its significance is unclear.

Most pages were used in a horizontal, ‘landscape’ orientation, and are attached to their modern stubs by their ‘top’ edges. The sheets all have the same longer dimension of 215 mm (8½ inches) and appear to retain their original, regularly trimmed edges on three sides, but their ‘heights’ vary, as the ‘top’ edges are trimmed slightly unevenly. They are all within a millimetre or two either side of 140 mm in height. There is no evidence of stitching, and they may simply have been sheets of a standard Imperial ‘letter’ size (279 x 215 mm; 11 x 8½ inches), cut in half by Turner himself. Embossed, blind ‘Bath Vellum’ cartouches on many of the leaves appear to confirm that they are sheets of writing paper, as Bell suggests.

Certain stains, creases, rubbing and offsetting appear to have passed from sheet to sheet, some of which are now bound in different parts of the book. However, these correlations are somewhat speculative and may not reflect the order of their use, so no attempt has been made here to propose an exact original sequence. The most obvious physical matches are cross-referenced between the entries for individual leaves. Matching the irregular ‘top’ edges of the half-sheets is not practicable now that they are firmly tipped in. Turner may have worked with the sheets pre-cut or folded in half, bundling them together as a makeshift ‘book’ while sketching.

It is possible if not probable that the drawings here and in the Stonehenge sketchbook were once kept in a large (350 x 285 x 50 mm) brown, leather-bound, gold-tooled album stamped ‘SKETCHES’ in gold on a red label on the spine (Tate). It contains 167 intact leaves of relatively coarse, speckled paper (340 x 270 mm), which are wrinkled and sometimes damp-stained at their yellow-tinted edges, and alternate with neat stubs. There are small paper tabs attached at intervals at the bottom left of pages and stubs with letters in ink giving an ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ sequence, perhaps indicating an intended function as a ledger or index. Helen Evans assumes that the stubs were ‘part of the original structure of the book’, with only ‘a handful’ ‘more roughly cut, suggesting that sheets have been removed’,15 while the tabs were ‘added later by the owner to adapt the book for use’.16 Incidentally, she has detected what appear to be white chalk markings on a few pages made ‘with a definite sweeping movement suggesting that they were drawn by hand’, but without creating ‘any identifiable images’.17

Inside the front cover of this album is the Turner Bequest executors’ note, in ink at the top: ‘N^o 378 | 102 pencil sketches – loose | 2 in pen and ink – | 2 in colour | 106 in all H.S Trimmer’, endorsed by Charles Eastlake and J.P. Knight with their initials ‘C.L.E.’ and ‘JPK’ in pencil, each side of the usual blind-stamped Turner Bequest monogram. Below this John Ruskin has written in pencil ‘The drawings in this book were spoiling. | They are put up in two parcels, marked | 378.A. 378.B. | J Ruskin. 1862’; below this in turn Finberg has written in pencil: ‘I have been carefully through all the | boxes & can find no parcels marked 378A & 378B. | What has become of these drawings? | AJ.F. 7 July 1905.’

Attached to the first folio is a grubby sheet of paper inscribed by John Ruskin in ink ‘12 Books. | (Including those of loose sheets) | Left out as examples’. At 228 x 190 mm, the sheet is close in size to the pages in the Stonehenge sketchbook, which were trimmed slightly when they were bound. The combined total of leaves with pencil drawings in this and the Stonehenge sketchbook (less the two additional Land’s End leaves mentioned above) is 103, which seems too close to Trimmer’s ‘106’ be a coincidence; however, if these are indeed the main body of the drawings in question, any associated ink or watercolour studies have yet to be identified. Helen Evans has noted:

This cockling and the slight wrinkling of the sketchbook’s leaves as described above may therefore indicate their formerly being placed in the album.

It should be noted that not quite all the page numbers in Finberg’s MS catalogue sequence match those inscribed on the versos. Why this should be is unclear, unless there were errors in transcribing numbers from discarded mounts onto the versos of the works. Where the two numbers are at odds, Finberg’s titles or notes of inscriptions match some drawings so precisely that there is no doubt in their identification; these few cases are marked with an asterisk. The few others have been linked in the present catalogue with various degrees of certainty and are indicated with question marks. In the case of folio 88 there are drawings on both sides, and as this is the only such leaf otherwise unmatched, the uncertainty lies only in the minor issue of which drawing Finberg regarded as the recto and which the verso, as he gave the same title to each.