Turner’s inscriptions consist of an address, ‘1 John Mews, Little James St. Bedford Road [or Row]’, written in ink, and some accounts in pencil:
Money received of Phillips 210
Pd Platt 17 10
Mrs W 6 6
Mrs D 4 4
28
The first item is Sir George Phillips’s payment for his commissioned picture
Linlithgow Palace, Scotland (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool),
1 which was shown at Turner’s Gallery in 1810. Butlin and Joll give its likely price as 200 guineas, which equates to £210. See folio 59 of the sketchbook for a further mention (
D07686).
Anthony Bailey suggests that Platt might be a doctor and Mrs. W a midwife, hired to assist at the birth in 1811 of Georgiana, the second of Sarah Danby’s two daughters supposedly by Turner.
2 Georgiana’s older sister, Evelina, was baptised at Guestling in 1801, and this East Sussex hamlet is mentioned on folio 99 (
D07751). Georgiana later claimed to have been born in Surrey but this might have been a mistake for Sussex. The final item in this list may represent a balance of the monthly sum of £4 14 6 paid to Sarah Danby by the Royal Society of Musicians, as observed by Jean Golt who illustrates the relevant page of its Claimants’ Receipt Book for the year July 1810–June 1811;
3 the accounts suggest that Turner sometimes claimed the allowance on Sarah’s behalf.
David Blayney Brown
May 2011
