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 > Aesacus and Hesperie Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: A Summary of Annual ?Royal Academy Accounts c.1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Summary of Annual ?Royal Academy Accounts’ c.1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
Inscription by Turner: A Summary of Annual ?Royal Academy Accounts c.1819
D13757
Turner Bequest CLXIX 4
Pen and ink and pencil on white wove paper, 119 x 87 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink and pencil (see main catalogue entry)
Part watermark ‘J Wha | Turke | 18’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘4’ bottom left, descending vertically (faint and smudged)
Stamped in black ‘CLXIX – 4’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner filled over half the page, turned vertically, with the following calculations, all in ink except for the isolated last line in pencil:
     1810   3915   9 
            4432.  10 
            4127.  8.  [?6] 
            4935   6 
            4648   17 
            5255   19 
            440    11 
            4961   12 
            5313   3 
        9 42,030   15 in 9 years. 
           46.70,. 1 . 3 
                  Exhibiting. 
 
             4. . 1 
The total of £42,030 and 15 shillings is correct; the subsequent division by nine is also accurate except for the last figure, as the whole should read £4,670, one shilling and eight pence. This appears to be an average figure over nine years, presumably 1810–18, and may relate to the Royal Academy’s income or exhibition sales over that time. In December 1818, Turner had been elected to the Academy’s Council, to oversee the running of the institution for the coming year;1 there are other notes concerning Academy business dated or datable to 1819 on folios 1 verso, 4 verso, 6 recto, 6 verso, 24 verso, 39 recto and 40 recto (D13752, D13758, D13761, D13762, D13787, D13810, D13812).

Matthew Imms
September 2013

1
See Alexander J. Finberg, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Second Edition, Revised, with a Supplement, by Hilda F. Finberg, revised ed., Oxford 1961, pp.254–5.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Summary of Annual ?Royal Academy Accounts c.1819 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-inscription-by-turner-a-summary-of-annual-royal-academy-r1147480, accessed 25 April 2024.