Among the Venetian sheets in paper conservator Peter Bower’s 1999 survey of Turner’s later papers,
2 Tate
D32233 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 14) was exhibited
3 and reproduced, but there is a seemingly inadvertent mismatch.
4 The detailed description and discussion of the sheet appear to apply to CCCXV
II 14, and Bower also refers to ‘CCCXVIII 13’,
5 meaning the present sheet. Bower noted: ‘Lightweight buff-grey wove | Watermark: W | Unknown maker’. He went on: ‘This quarter sheet is part of a well-formed lightweight buff wove sheet that also includes CCCXVIII 13’ (i.e. CCCXV
II 13), torn down from a ‘full sheet size of approximately 17 ¾ x 22 ¾’ (inches; 450 x 578 mm), which ‘only matches one English paper size, Extra Large Post’, generally used for ‘white writing paper rather than coloured papers’; he suggested the German ‘Gross Median’ format of 460 x 590 mm as another possibility. Bower noted Tate
D40202 (Turner Bequest LXXIV C), ‘erroneously catalogued as part of the [1802]
Grenoble sketchbook’, but likely a Swiss 1840s sketch, as a ‘part sheet of this same paper ... also watermarked W in an outline capital’.
6 Compare the watermark on the present section of CCCXVII 13.