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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: A Draft List of 'Liber Studiorum' Pastoral Subjects c.1808-18

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: A Draft List of ‘Liber Studiorum’ Pastoral Subjects c.1808–18
D12160
Turner Bequest CLIV a 25a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 89 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page, turned vertically, is taken up with the following list in two columns:
        Pastoral                   Hay making
        1 Cocks and Hens           Ploughing
        2 Farm Yard                Harvest
        3 Hedging and Ditching     Potatoes [?Dig]1
        4 Twickenham Bridge +
        5 Thames Bank +
        6 Juvenile Tricks
        7 Boy Fishing
        8 Flounder Fishing +
        9 Solway Moss
        10 Cows and Bridge
        13 Says Mill
        15 Dunkarton Mill
        16 Watermill
        17 Snow +
        18 Frosty Morning +
        19 Sheepwashing +
          Soldiers and Winchelsea +
        20 Norham
This is the first of a series of working lists of subjects within the various categories of Turner’s Liber Studiorum series of landscape prints, running on to folio 32 recto (D12171; Turner Bequest CLIV a 31). An annotated version, 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).
A provisional list of the first ten parts of a projected twenty, each part comprising five prints drawn from different categories, runs from folio 24 verso to folio 25 verso (D12156–D12158; Turner Bequest CLIV a 23a, 24, 24a); this has been dated to 1808. Since some of the subjects in the category lists appear to have been added as late as 1818,2 the pages are all dated here to c.1808–18.

Matthew Imms
September 2013

1
See Forrester 1996, p.161 (transcription, followed here with slight variations)
2
Ibid., p.14.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Draft List of ‘Liber Studiorum’ Pastoral Subjects c.1808–18 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2013, 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-list-of-liber-studiorum-r1147577, accessed 18 September 2024.