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

This visiting card from the painter William Richardson is the only item now contained within the bellows-type pocket inside the back cover of the 1840 Rotterdam to Venice sketchbook (D41031). Richardson is recorded as working between 1842 and 1877,1 and showed landscapes at numerous annual Royal Academy exhibitions between the former year and 1869, with subjects in common with Turner’s earlier work including Buckfastleigh, Rosslyn, the River Wye, and Kent and Yorkshire. He had various London addresses, and was at 38a Edward Street, connecting Hampstead Road west to Cumberland Market (now Varndell Street, NW1,2 and much changed), between 1845 and 1850.3

Richardson’s address near Regent’s Park is less than a mile north-east of Turner’s Harley Street studio, but no particular connection between the two artists is known. Presumably this card was acquired, annotated with the Edward Street address and secreted somewhat randomly at least five years after this book’s active use on the Continent. Compare Tate D34937 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 437v), a visiting card from the artist Charles Deane, who also lived near the park. Perhaps in the 1830s or early 1840s, Turner had used its reverse (D34936; CCCXLIV 437) for one of a series of tiny classical compositions on similar cards, including one of his own (D34932; CCCXLIV 434).

The verso is blank.