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

Turner’s note reads:

As Davies observes, this is the draft of a request from Turner to the Council of the Royal Academy for more time to prepare his lectures as Professor of Perspective. The initials ‘PO PS’ on the facing folio 22 verso (D06763) must be connected with it. Turner had been elected to the post in December 1807 and here invokes his right to two years for preparation. The note must date from late in 1809, his ‘expedition this summer’ having been visits to Sussex, Yorkshire and Cumberland.1 Council minutes of 17 October 1809 record receipt of Turner’s request while those of ?10 February 1810 state that Turner had ‘agreed to postpone’ his lectures until the following season. Davies suggests that Turner might have been put off by protest about his friend John Soane, the Professor of Architecture. However, this arose after Turner’s request, and following Soane’s attack on the work of Robert Smirke in his lecture on 3 February 1810, which caused such uproar that his course was suspended. More likely is that Soane’s previously high standards of content and presentation had persuaded Turner that his own material still needed work. He began delivering his lectures in January 1811.2

Continued from folio 22 verso (D06763) is a small pencil sketch of Thames-side buildings and boats.