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

In the upper half of the page, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, is a rough sketch of two figures wearing hats, one seated and one standing. Turner’s inscription to their right is presumably a colour annotation for their dress. Below, largely obscured by the Turner Bequest Executors’ endorsement, is a slight pencil study of buildings and ramparts in an unidentified location.

Upside down relative to the drawing, at the bottom of the page (the top as foliated) is the customary ink endorsement by the Executors. In this case including signatures by Henry Scott Trimmer and Charles Turner, it reads: ‘No. 195. This book contains 86 | leaves Pencil Sketches, most | on both sides – | H.S. Trimmer | C Turner’. The sketchbook’s original schedule number1 was initially written erroneously as ‘185’, crossed through in pencil and corrected with a ‘9’ overwriting the ‘8’. In pencil beneath is ‘JPK’, the initials of John Prescott Knight, one of the Bequest’s assessors.

Further notes are inscribed in pencil by the assessors on the adjacent paper-lined cover flap, protruding around 20 mm from the outer edge. Initialled in pencil by Charles Lock Eastlake, ‘C.L.E.’, and again by Knight, ‘JPK’, the revised assessment reads, ‘only 80 leaves drawn upon – 82 counting the covers | 84 counting the blank leaves –’.