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

Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, over half the page is taken up with the following notes in pencil:

The systematic listing of climatic effects here bears a close resemblance to one of the many compilations of pictorial elements assembled by the artist and theorist Alexander Cozens (1717–1786). The list in question appears in a sequence entitled ‘Various Species of Landscape &c. in Nature’; it is labelled ‘Circumstances’ and duplicates Turner’s in several respects.1 The document was transcribed by the artist John Constable (1776–1837) from a copy belonging to his patron Sir George Beaumont (1753–1837),2 and although few examples of the sheet have survived it was clearly of interest to artists of Turner’s generation.

The titles of Turner’s exhibited works from these years demonstrate a strong concern for the depiction of weather conditions and effects of light at different times of day.