Joseph Mallord William Turner

Inscription by Turner: A Name

c.1818

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

Not on display

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Liber Notes (2) Sketchbook [Finberg CLIV a]
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 112 × 89 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D12179
Turner Bequest CLIV a 39

Catalogue entry

Written with the page turned vertically, this brief, declamatory inscription may the beginning of the draft of a letter, probably to W.B. Cooke, the engraver and publisher with whom Turner collaborated on various series of prints in the 1810s and 1820s,1 or his engraver brother George.2 There are various lists and calculations to do with printmaking business in this sketchbook (see the Introduction), and ‘Cooke’ appears again on folio 59 recto (D12204; CLIV a 58) in notes datable to about 1818.

See Gillian Forrester, ‘Cooke, William Bernard (1778–1855)’, in Evelyn Joll, Butlin and Luke Herrmann eds., The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.63.

See Gillian Forrester, ‘Cooke, George (1781–1834)’, ibid.

Verso:

Blank

Matthew Imms
September 2013

Read full Catalogue entry