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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country and Yorkshire 1814-17 > Devon Rivers, No.2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: A Draft of a Speech or Letter Concerning the Royal Academy ?1814

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Draft of a Speech or Letter Concerning the Royal Academy’ ?1814
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 83 Recto:
Inscription by Turner: A Draft of a Speech or Letter Concerning the Royal Academy ?1814
D40819
Pencil on white wove paper, fragment made good to full extent of leaf, 178 x 110 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The fragment remaining attached to the book at the top left has been set into a new, blank leaf. The rest of the leaf was presumably torn out and discarded. The following transcription of the opening words of each line is based on Finberg’s:1
The honor you have conf
Royal Academy [...]
Academy and
in offering my th
part of it. [?For]
most heartfelt
towards the [...]
when the var[...]
the [?encouragement]
by the very e[...]
This does indeed seem to be the draft of a speech, as Finberg proposes, or perhaps a letter. Turner’s of 11 July 1816 to thank Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy, for a medal (struck in West’s own honour) is couched in similarly ingratiating terms,2 although there does not seem to be a direct correlation in the phrasing.
For other manuscript material in this sketchbook, see the Introduction.

Matthew Imms
July 2014

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.379.
2
John Gage, Collected Correspondence of J.M.W. Turner with an Early Diary and a Memoir by George Jones, Oxford 1980, pp.66–7 letter no.64.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Draft of a Speech or Letter Concerning the Royal Academy ?1814 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-a-draft-of-a-speech-or-letter-r1147334, accessed 18 September 2024.