Joseph Mallord William Turner

In August 1825 Turner was abroad in the Low Countries, and it is possible that the scattered figure studies and sailing boats here, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation and characterised by Finberg as ‘bathers, groups on the sands, &c.’,1 may relate to that visit, although drawings on nearby pages show the familiar scene from the top of Richmond Hill (see the Introduction). Compare the note on folio 82 recto (D18692), apparently reading ‘Girls play with stones’, with the activities of the ‘Boy and Girls’ here.

Technical notes:

The page has rather darkened in general, but conspicuously where it is pasted over the overlap of the pencil holder integral with the back cover.