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

At the top left, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, is a small landscape study framed by pencil lines. It appears to show a wooded landscape with a structure including a vertical feature, which is too slight to relate with any certainty to the 1830 view of the Eleanor Cross monument at Hardingstone, Northamptonshire on folio 71 recto opposite (D22459). As Finberg documented in the index to his 1909 Turner Bequest Inventory, and as Jack Lindsay and Fred Bachrach have subsequently noted, Turner’s ‘Cyp’ is one of several such notes scattered through his sketchbooks referring to Aelbert Cuyp (sic; 1620–1691), the renowned Dutch landscape painter who was an important influence;1 presumably some aspect of form, colour or light in this scene evoked his work. There appears to be another very slight landscape study at the top right, comprising no more than a couple of wavy lines.

As Ian Warrell notes, it is unclear whether this study of a nude woman – probably reclining across the width of the page with her arms behind her head but possibly standing, assuming the page was turned vertically – and another on folio 1 verso (D22324) are ‘formal or more improvised studies’.2 There is a perhaps related inscription above another figure drawing on folio 72 recto (D22461).

For other figure studies in this sketchbook, see under D22324.