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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Milan to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscriptions by Turner: Title and Number of Sketchbook 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscriptions by Turner: Title and Number of Sketchbook’ 1819 (Front cover of sketchbook)
Front cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Front Cover:
Inscriptions by Turner: Title and Number of Sketchbook 1819
D40890
Ink on grey paper quarter-bound over brown leather on board, 120 x 195 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘Milan | to | Venice’ top centre and ‘3’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram centre left
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV’ top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Ian Warrell has noted how Turner organised his sketchbooks from the 1819–20 Italian tour with paper spine labels and marking ‘the outer edges of the pages of his standard size books with numbers indicating the sequence in which they had been used, suggesting that he perhaps stowed this core group in a box for frequent reference’.1 In this case, the number ‘3’ marking the bottom edge of the page block also appears here along with a brief note of the book’s ‘Milan to Venice’ itinerary, which Finberg noted in 1909 as being repeated on the label2 (since lost).

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Ian Warrell, Turner’s Sketchbooks, London 2014, p.15; see also p.234.
2
See Finberg 1909, I, p.511.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscriptions by Turner: Title and Number of Sketchbook 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscriptions-by-turner-title-and-number-of-sketchbook-r1186438, accessed 26 April 2024.