Joseph Mallord William Turner

For Turner’s picture, The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory (Tate N00480),1 exhibited at Turner’s Gallery in 1806; see the Introduction to this sketchbook for the picture and related work. The right section of this leaf has a continuation of a carefully drawn study of the composition on folio 15 (D05481; Turner Bequest LXXXIX 26), for which see full catalogue entry. On the other side (D05490; Turner Bequest LXXXIX 31) is a note by Ruskin instructing that this drawn portion be cut off. He gave it the same folio number as the rest of the subject, intending to amalgamate the two parts and discard the blank area, on which he stated ‘nothing’ was drawn although in fact there are further sketches on the other side. The leaf was cut vertically, but the discarded part survived (though not numbered by Finberg) and was restored when the book was restitched.