The following is inscribed in ink at the top of the page. The last entry has been deleted with wash:
Church at Newport Isle of Wight. Novr 2 1800
Winchester Cross - .. Mr. Alexander –
Northampton Do –
The last entry has been deleted with a stroke of wash.
The pencil sketch is very slight and stylised, almost a diagram, and may not be by Turner. It is somewhat reminiscent of certain drawings of Henry Fuseli (1741–1825); for example a study inscribed ‘Devils Dyke’ (Öffentliche Kunstsammlungen, Basel), where diminutive figures are seen on precipitous paths above a vertiginous cliff with the sea below. A more substantial drawing, The Ladies of Hastings (Kunsthaus, Zurich), contains larger figures, including a man looking up from below at promenading women. The former dates to around 1790, and the latter to 1798–1800.
The drawing here and Fuseli’s sketches are connected, however tenuously, by an experience of the coastal cliffs of southern England. The only portion of the Isle of Wight coast that might correspond to this extremely summary sketch is the height of what is now called Tennyson’s Down, above Freshwater Bay.