J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

With the page turned vertically, Turner has inscribed the following in pencil:

This list is continued immediately ‘below’ on folio 27 recto opposite (D27775):

D27774 and D27775 comprise an itinerary from Geneva in Switzerland to Dijon in France which appears to relate to the tour in 1836, when Turner travelled through the two countries (and on into northern Italy) with his friend and patron H.A.J. Munro of Novar, passing through Dijon and Dole on the outward journey before reaching Lake Geneva; see David Hill’s Introduction to the ‘Tour to the Alps 1836’ section of the present catalogue. The significance of the possible reading ‘June’ in the first line is unclear, as the tour took place in August. The places are listed from south to north, in reverse of Turner’s route, and he did not return the same way. The source is presumably a contemporary guidebook; allowing for Turner’s variable spelling and one or two uncertain readings, the route between Dijon and Geneva is as given, for example, in the 1836 edition of Mariana Starke’s Travels in Europe.1

Other place names appear on the recto of the present page and folio 27 verso (D27773, D27776); they are much more difficult to make out, but are probably also Continental. None of the landscape drawings in the present sketchbook are identified, but there is nothing to suggest that they are Continental rather than English scenes, so the exact circumstances and date of these inscriptions remains uncertain.