Joseph Mallord William Turner

Inscription by Turner: ?Appointments

c.1834–6

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Colour Studies (1) Sketchbook [Finberg CCXCI (b)]
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 101 × 77 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D28791
Turner Bequest CCXCI b 1

Catalogue entry

With the page turned vertically, Turner has scrawled three lines of notes; the transcription here closely follows Finberg’s,1 although even the little of it that he felt able to decipher remains uncertain:

M^rs [?Tratz] – 1
M^rs Ol[...] 3 [?o cl]
N^o 23 [...]

The final word is perhaps part of an address. The significance of the whole remains unclear, but may represent an afternoon’s appointments. Compare the even more obscure notes on folio 9 verso (D28800).

Finberg 1909, II, p.934.

Technical notes:

This page is the verso of the sketchbook’s marbled front free endpaper, and is unusual in being numbered as the first in Finberg’s sequence for this sketchbook, presumably following John Ruskin’s existing red ink inscription. Normally the recto of the first leaf is numbered as such, but presumably the marbling precluded that here. The edges are heavily stained owing to their proximity to the leather overlaps inside the front cover.

Matthew Imms
May 2014

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