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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Liber Studiorum notes c.1807-19 > Finance Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?A Landscape; with Inscriptions by Turner: Accounts and Notes c.1807-14

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Landscape; with Inscriptions by Turner: Accounts and Notes’ c.1807-14
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 44 Verso:
?A Landscape; with Inscriptions by Turner: Accounts and Notes c.1807–14
D08355
Turner Bequest CXXII 44a
Pencil and pen and ink on white wove paper, 69 x 112 mm
Part watermark ‘P | 01’
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The prominent ink inscriptions seem to have been inscribed over a slight pencil drawing, apparently a landscape, made with book inverted relative to its present foliation. Other landscapes in this sketchbook may date from around 1807 (see the Introduction). With the page turned vertically, Turner set out the following accounts, filling the half of the page nearest the gutter:
        Left in the Reduced   150 | 
                               50 | 
        Now                        100 
           120 
           200                300 
 
                        1452–7    5 
                         150 
                        1602–7–5 
                          50 
                              300 
 
                                       100 C 
                                       150 R 
                    250 or 70          150 
                                       100 <...> 
                                       300 [?C]  
The figure of £1452 seven shillings and five pence and £1602 seven shillings and five pence also appear on folio 7 verso (D08294), datable to about 1810. ‘C’ indicates Consol (i.e. consolidated) stocks, and ‘R’ for Reduced stocks (as in the first line). For more on Turner’s finances as set out in the extensive notes in this sketchbook, see the Introduction.
In the outer half of the page, turned horizontally, Turner made the following note. The first line, not transcribed by Finberg, and the end of the second, which he read as ‘Rd’, are now almost illegible due to heavy staining (see the Technical notes):
        Mrs Lloyd Gibbon
        7 Sackville [?St]
        137 – 100
        29 April 1807
         [?Mother]
The subject of this note is mentioned in the entry for ‘Stays’ in a contemporary Domestic Encyclopædia, published in both Britain and America: ‘In March, 1801, Mrs. Lloyd Gibbon, of Sackville-street, Piccadilly, obtained a patent for new-invented stays, for women and others.’1 This is followed by a technical description. She placed the following detailed advertisement in the May 1807 issue of a women’s magazine:
HIS MAJESTY’S ROYAL LETTERS PATENT | Being granted to Mrs. LLOYD GIBBON, for Stays, she hereby informs the Public, particularly those unacquainted with their great usefulness, and persons who are unnaturally large, that the Patentee has actually succeeded in five thousand cases, in removing with perfect ease the fulness of the stomach and bowels. ... persons in a pregnant state will find particular comfort from her Pregnant Stays, which are adapted on purpose for that state. Mrs. L. G. suits every Lady herself, and may be seen from eleven to five o’clock. To save trouble, all sizes are ready, price from three to four guineas, ready money. No. 7, Sackville-street, Piccadilly.2
Given her frank reference to pregnancy, it is notable that she was later President of the Dorcas Society,3 founded in 1813 as a charity ‘affording pecuniary aid to poor married women during their confinement’4 (in childbirth rather than prison). Mr G. Gibbon is recorded as an artist working at the same address a little later, and was presumably her husband or close relative. In 1818 he won a Royal Society of Arts medal for a drawing5 and was listed as a specialist in portraits in 1820.6 The nature of Turner’s business with Mrs Lloyd Gibbon is unknown.7
1
A.F.M. Willich, The Domestic Encyclopædia, or, a Dictionary of Facts, and Useful Knowledge, 1st American ed., vol.V, Philadelphia 1804, p.40.
2
‘Monthly Compendium of Literary, Fashionable, and Domestic Advertisements; For May 1, 1807’, La Belle Assemblée or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Addressed Particularly to the Ladies, vol.2, January–June 1807, p.[25]; see also the supplement ‘For June 1, 1807’, p.[33].
3
A. Highmore, Philanthropia Metropolitana; a View of the Charitable Institutions Established in and near London, Chiefly during the Last Twelve Years, London 1822, p.329.
4
Ibid., p.327.
5
‘Proceedings of Societies’, New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register, vol.9, 1818, p.517.
6
‘Names and Residences of the Principal Living Artists...’, Annals of the Fine Arts for MDCCCXIX, vol.4, 1820, p.647.
7
The relevant section of this entry is largely paraphrased in Imms 2011, p.5.
Technical notes:
The outer edges of the page are stained from proximity to the leather overlaps under the paste-down inside the back cover opposite (D40901). The final figure of the watermark appears to be a ‘1’ but might possibly be a ‘4’ (see the Introduction to the sketchbook).

Matthew Imms
September 2013

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Landscape; with Inscriptions by Turner: Accounts and Notes c.1807–14 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-landscape-with-inscriptions-by-turner-accounts-and-notes-r1147833, accessed 15 May 2025.