At the top, inverted and partially obscured by the Executors’ endorsement, is Turner’s slight pencil study of a building and a mountain profile, the location of which is unclear.
Written in ink at the top of the page is the customary endorsement by the Executors of the Turner Bequest. It includes signatures by Charles Turner and Henry Scott Trimmer: ‘No 186 This Book contains | 68 leaves with Pencil drawing | on both sides – | H.S. Trimmer | C Turner’. In pencil beneath are the initials of the two assessors, John Prescott Knight and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, which appear as ‘JPK’ and ‘C.L.E.’
Towards the top left, over the ‘186’, is a pencil ‘8’. This is presumably a clarification added at the point of signing off, to confirm that the original schedule number of the sketchbook is ‘186’ rather than the ‘156’ it might be read as, although the pencil figure is hardly better formed.