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

The whole of this page is taken up with the following notes:

Jack Lindsay has described this page as a ‘receipt’.1 His is an accurate description, and one much repeated, as the script amounts to a record of rent paid to Turner in 1821. Finberg outlines the circumstances surrounding this arrangement in some detail, explaining how Turner had inherited property from his uncle, J.M.W. Marshall, in 1820.2 As evidenced by studies of Oxford elsewhere in the present sketchbook, it seems that Turner attended to his responsibilities with his family in Oxfordshire in person. For a more thorough explanation of the logistics of the agreement, see the sketchbook Introduction.

In any case, Finberg asserts that ‘one of [Turner’s] sketch-books in use in 1821 contained a copy of a formal receipt for the rent of two of these houses’. ³ This is the sketchbook in question, and James Hamilton goes even further, elaborating on the story thus: ‘[Turner] was careful, even pedantic, with paperwork...making somebody (the recipient?) copy out the receipt he himself had given for rentals paid for the Wapping properties’.4

Technical notes:

A small hole has been pierced through the page at bottom left, possibly when the paper was rendered weak by too much moisture; supplied either by water or ink. At top right, red ink used by Ruskin to number folio 91 recto (D17363) has soaked through the paper and leaves a pink mark. A clear finger or thumb print is impressed on the page at far left, towards the bottom.