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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: A Recipe for an Ointment 1798

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Front Cover:
Inscription by Turner: A Recipe for an Ointment 1798
D41424
Pen and ink on buff laid paper, 174 x 125 mm
Inscribed by Turner with extensive notes (see main catalogue entry)
Stamped in black ‘XLII’ top left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page is taken up with the following, inscribed in pen and brown ink:
Recept for making | an [?Efficitable] ointment for [?Cut] Br[?uises]
Solomons Seal leaves and Buds
Comfrey                  Do
Bay
Elder
Valerian
in equal quantity to which | may be added a handfull of | Parsley these herbs must be cut | small bruised in a stone mortar | boil’d for some hours in a Bell mold | Kettle over a slow fire in a | sufficient quantity of unwashd | butter to make the Herbs thorougly [sic] | moist it must stand ten or 12 | days after which strain thro. | a Cloth, the Juice then to be boild and well skimmd and | run into small Jars or Pots
Given by Miss Narraway of | Bristol
James Hamilton gives this recipe as chronologically the first in a list of medical remedies found in Turner’s sketchbooks,1 at all stages of his life until the late 1830s. Miss Narraway was a member of the Bristol family with whom Turner had stayed on his first visit to the city in 1791; see the Bristol and Malmesbury sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest VI), and the Introduction to the 1798 Hereford Court sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest XXXVIII). See also the studies of shipping at Bristol in the present book, on folios 13 verso–14 recto and 14 verso–15 recto (D01701–D01704; Turner Bequest XLII 26–27, 28–29).

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

1
See Hamilton 2007, pp.339–41.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Recipe for an Ointment 1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-a-recipe-for-an-ointment-r1173871, accessed 28 March 2024.