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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1813 > Chemistry and Apuleia Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: A Note on Print Sales c.1813

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Note on Print Sales’ c.1813
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 54 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: A Note on Print Sales c.1813
D09958
Turner Bequest CXXXV 54a
Pencil on white wove paper, 88 x 113 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Sir W Pilkington Bart | 1 number of the Coast – 18s | has no 1. and 3. of Liber Studiorum | the rest to be sent’ from top
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Thornbury notes this passage in passing as an example of the wide variety of material in Turner’s sketchbooks.1 Sir William Pilkington, 8th Bt (1775–1850) was an amateur Yorkshire artist and a relative of Turner’s great patron Walter Fawkes.2 He bought a number of Turner’s Yorkshire watercolours, while this inscription suggests he also bought or subscribed to prints. The parts of the Liber Studiorum mentioned here had first been issued in 1807 and 1808; James Hamilton observes that this inscription is indicative of the onerous responsibility Turner took in being his own publisher and micro-managing the distribution of the series,3 which is discussed in a separate section of the present catalogue.
The watercolours for the Picturesque Views of the Southern Coast of England (see the Introduction to the 1811 West Country tour) were well in hand by 1813, the likely date of this sketchbook, so Turner may be noting an advance order. On the other hand, his prints and those by others in Part I were dated 1 January 1814,4 which would place the present inscription then or later if it is taken to show that Pilkington had already acquired some.
1
Thornbury 1862, I, p.359; see also close variation in Thornbury 1897, p.475.
2
Terry Riggs, ‘Pilkington, Sir William’ in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.229.
3
See Hamilton 1997, p.133.
4
See ‘Appendix B: List of Plates in the Parts as Issued’ in Alexander J. Finberg, An Introduction to Turner’s Southern Coast, with a Catalogue of the Engravings in Which All the Known Working-Proofs Are Arranged and Described for the First Time, and a Full Transcript Is Made of Turner’s Marginal Notes and Instructions to the Engravers, London 1929, p.76.
Technical notes:
There is some offsetting from the ink inscription on folio 55 recto opposite (D09959).

Matthew Imms
April 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Note on Print Sales c.1813 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-a-note-on-print-sales-r1147913, accessed 18 April 2024.