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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Nude Studies and Erotica c.1805-24 > Academy Auditing Sketchbook [Finberg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Number of Sketchbook c.1821-4

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Label on Spine:
Inscription by Turner: Number of Sketchbook circa 1821–4
D40743
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 60 x 20 mm, laid around spine of paper cover
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘118’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This label is not noted in Finberg’s Turner Bequest Inventory.1 David Hill has suggested that Turner probably added such labels during a general review of his sketchbooks in about 1821 or 1822,2 while Ian Warrell dates this exercise to 1824.3 In the absence of definitive evidence, this inscription is dated here in line with these suggestions and the last likely datable use of the sketchbook (see the introduction).

Matthew Imms
January 2012

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, pp.639–41.
2
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.
3
Warrell 2003, p.21.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Number of Sketchbook c.1821–4 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-number-of-sketchbook-r1184351, accessed 18 May 2024.