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

Just over half the page, turned vertically, is taken up with the following notes:

This is a provisional list of subjects for two parts of Turner’s Liber Studiorum series of landscape prints; the overall series was issued between 1807 and 1819. The first four parts are noted on folio 24 verso (D12156; Turner Bequest CLIV a 23a) and parts 4–8 are listed on the recto of the current page (D12157; CLIV a 24). The list appears to have been written at one sitting, departing from the published order after part 2 and thus probably made between its publication in February 1808 and that of part 3 in June.2 Part 10 was eventually issued in 1812, together with a frontispiece, to complete the first half of the projected series of a hundred prints.

An annotated version of this list, with full details of the subjects and their publishing history, can be found in the present author’s overall Introduction to the section of this catalogue dealing with the watercolour studies for the Liber (c.1806–24).

Working lists of subjects within the various categories of the Liber – such as ‘Pastoral’ and ‘Marine’ – run from folio 26 verso to folio 32 recto (D12160–D12171; Turner Bequest CLIV a 25a–31).