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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Scotland 1801-10 > Dunbar Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Description of Sketchbook's Contents c.1801

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Label on Spine:
Inscription by Turner: Description of Sketchbook’s Contents c.1801
D40777
Ink on white wove paper, 23 x 66 mm, pasted on leather spine of sketchbook
Inscribed by Turner in brown ink ‘90 Scotland’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
David Hill initially suggested that Turner probably added his sequence of numbered and annotated paper spine labels during a general review of his sketchbooks in about 1821 or 1822,1 later revising this to the second half of 1824 on the dating evidence of some of the relevant books.2 Ian Warrell has subsequently reasoned that the process began in 1823, ending in the summer of 1824.3 However, while bearing this in mind, the date given in this entry is in line with that of Turner’s active use of the sketchbook, so as not to imply a misleadingly wider period.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

Revised by Matthew Imms
April 2015

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.
3
See Ian Warrell, Turner’s Sketchbooks, London 2014, pp.15–16, 236 note 34, and p.234 for annotated checklist of ‘Turner’s Sketchbook Sequences’.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Inscription by Turner: Description of Sketchbook’s Contents c.1801 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, revised by Matthew Imms, April 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-description-of-sketchbooks-contents-r1178998, accessed 25 April 2024.