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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Hastings Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Accounts with James Lahee &c (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1809-14

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Accounts with James Lahee &c (Inscriptions by Turner)’ c.1809-14
Folio 1 Recto:
Accounts with James Lahee &c (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1809–14
D07595
Turner Bequest CXI 1
Pencil and pen and ink on white wove paper, 110 x 88 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry) and ink
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘1’ bottom left corner, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXI bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s inscriptions are as follows. In pencil:
Bill               197 12 2 
Lahee Paid          47 11 6 
Get to Pay L.       42 
                   287 3 8 
In ink:
   49 for 4 
   50 
   16 
  300                    80 
   50                    12 Engraving 
  800 Printing          960 
  960 
 1760 
James Lahee (active 1810–52) of Castle Street, near Oxford Street, London, was a skilled copper-plate printer and ‘in the mezzotint department of art the acknowledged “facile princeps”’.1 He served as printer for the engraved plates of Turner’s Liber Studiorum of which he formed an important collection of proofs, subsequently sold to the engraver Thomas Lupton. Along with Lupton and Charles Turner, he claimed that a maximum of thirty fine proofs could be taken from each plate.2 The first set of figures written here and others in this sketchbook must be Liber-related transactions; see folios 96 verso–97 verso (D07747–D07749) where Turner projects the costs and potential profits of the publication if a further seventy ‘proof’ sets were released. John Gage publishes a letter from Lahee to Turner of 2 February 1811, to accompany delivery of impressions of the Liber subjects Temple of Minerva Medica and Hind Head Hill, and suggests that the payments recorded relate to these plates.
In Gillian Forrester’s opinion, the other figures concern different publications, perhaps George and William Bernard Cooke’s Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England published 1814–26.
1
T.F. Dibdin, Reminiscences of a Literary Life, London 1836, vol.II, p.619 note.
2
John Pye and J.L. Roget, Notes and Memoranda Respecting Turner’s Liber Studiorum, London 1879, vol.I, p.71; Forrester 1996, p.20.
Verso:
Blank

David Blayney Brown
April 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Accounts with James Lahee &c (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1809–14’, catalogue entry, April 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/accounts-with-james-lahee-c-inscriptions-by-turner-r1131083, accessed 23 April 2024.