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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > Mortlake and Pulborough Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: ?Notes on an Engraving Project ?1821

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: ?Notes on an Engraving Project’ ?1821
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 87 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: ?Notes on an Engraving Project ?1821
D40985
Pencil on white wove paper, 187 x 113 mm
Part watermark ‘R Bar | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with notes and figures (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘966.’ top left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
At the top of the page, turned vertically, Turner has written the following notes in pencil:
      10        [?Imprint] 7 6 , 100
        8   ______           ______[?6d Hd]
        6
        _____                      3 [...] 6
        [...] Hd _   _      1 [?Impression]
Calld 3 – , [?stick of h...]    [?d...]
Apparently of a financial nature, and not mentioned by Finberg in the 1909 Inventory,1 these typically convoluted notes, are difficult to make out. The likely words ‘Imprint’ and ‘Impression’ suggest one of the many engraving projects with which Turner was involved. They may have been made in 1821, by association with the landscape study on the recto (D18840; Turner Bequest CCXIII 91).
1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.650, noting that the leaf was then ‘mounted on cartridge’.
Technical notes:
This leaf was not originally part of the Mortlake and Pulborough sketchbook, as discussed in the entry for D18840.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: ?Notes on an Engraving Project ?1821 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-notes-on-an-engraving-project-r1172957, accessed 25 April 2024.