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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Midlands 1794-1802 > Drawings Made on the Midland Tour > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Names and Addresses ?1794

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Names and Addresses’ ?1794
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inscription by Turner: Names and Addresses ?1794
D40040
Pencil right on white wove paper, 212 x 276 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘for Wm Blake Esqre | Newhouse | to the Care of Mr. Collins Booksr. | on the Canal –’ top
Stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
This inscription, on one half of a folded sheet (the recto of this half being D00334; Turner Bequest XXI H 1), is not mentioned in Finberg’s 1909 Turner Bequest catalogue.1 William Blake of Newhouse was to become a significant patron of Turner’s in the later 1790s; this is the first record of contact between them. Blake may have been taught drawing by Turner: a watercolour by Blake in Turner’s style is in the British Museum, London (1962–11–10–1).2
It is possible that Blake commissioned a view of Valle Crucis based on the drawing on the other half of the recto of this sheet (D00335; Turner Bequest XXI H 2). No watercolour answering to that description is known, but an ambitious finished work (Tate D00703; Turner Bequest XXVIII R), which shows the ruins in a different view, may have been intended for him.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.33.
2
See Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, pp.176–7 no.B18.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Inscription by Turner: Names and Addresses ?1794 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2012, 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/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-names-and-addresses-r1141060, accessed 24 April 2024.