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 > Devonshire Rivers, No.3, and Wharfedale ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Title of Sketchbook c.1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Label on Spine:
Inscription by Turner: Title of Sketchbook c.1816
D40878
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 31 x 70 mm, pasted around leather spine of sketchbook
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘112 D[...]shire Yorkshire’,
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In the absence of specific evidence, this inscription is dated here to about 1816 in line with the Yorkshire subjects in the sketchbook (later than the Devon views, as discussed in the Introduction), although David Hill has suggested that Turner probably added the spine labels during a general review of his sketchbooks in about 1821 or 1822,1 later revising this to the second half of 1824.2
1
See David Hill, ‘The Landscape of Imagination and the Sense of Place: Turner’s Sketching Practice’ in Maurice Guillaud, Nicholas Alfrey, Andrew Wilton and others, Turner en France, exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris 1981, pp.143, 147 note 34.
2
See David Hill, Turner on the Thames: River Journeys in the Year 1805, New Haven and London 1993, p.176 note 79.
Technical notes:
There has been a small loss to the label within the first word, originally ‘Devonshire’, since Finberg transcribed it, and further losses to the two corners above the inscription.

Matthew Imms
July 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Title of Sketchbook c.1816 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-title-of-sketchbook-r1147343, accessed 26 April 2024.