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

This watercolour sketch appears to show a mass of trees and perhaps some human figures beneath a tempestuous sky. Although it is too vague to be conclusively linked to any finished vignettes, the work appears to be one of a group of more than thirty studies in the Turner Bequest related to Turner’s illustrations for Thomas Campbell’s Poetical Works. It was once part of a parcel of studies described by John Ruskin as ‘A.B. 40. PO. Vignette beginnings, once on a roll. Worthless’;1 see the technical notes below. Finberg records how Ruskin later described his phrasing in a letter to Ralph Nicholson Wornum as ‘horrible’, adding ‘I never meant it to be permanent’.2

Despite Ruskin’s ungenerous assessment, these studies provide important insight into Turner’s working processes for literary illustration. Unlike the finished vignettes, which are characterised by minute detail and fine brushwork, the preparatory sketches are painted on cheap, lightweight paper and executed in a rough, loose style. They appear to have been conceived as simple experimental sketches and often bear little or no relation to Turner’s finished vignette compositions.

The verso (D40418) is blank apart from the Turner Bequest executors’ endorsement and subsequent numbering.

Technical notes:

Peter Bower has noted that this study is made on low-grade machine-made cartridge paper. The maker is unknown and there is no watermark. As quoted above, Finberg transcribed John Ruskin’s note that this sheet was among a group of thirty-two vignette studies (D27556–D27587; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 39–70) ‘once on a roll’; in fact the present work is on similar paper from a different batch. Turner has used the ‘felt’ side of the sheet which has slightly more texture than the ‘wire’ side, allowing better adhesion of pigment and graphite to the surface of the sheet. Many of Turner’s vignette studies were made on a similar grade of machine-made paper, and the artist employed the ‘felt’ side on all of them.1