HE SELLS FIFTY WATER-COLOURS TO MR. FAWKES OF FARNLEY HALL
The 'Rhine Tour' Sketch-Book of 1817 suggests that Turner was in the mood to be careful about his material necessities, one can hardly call them comforts. Written inside the covers are the words:—
'Boots, Pouch, Fever Medicine, Bark, Pencils, Colours,' followed by, 'Vier ist myn Simmer—Where is my chamber?' On a later page I find the following list:—
'3 Shirts, 1 Night ditto, A Razor, a Ferrell for Umbrella, a Pair of Stockings, a waistcoat, 1/2 dozen of Pencils, 6 Cravats, 1 large ditto, 1 Box of Colours'—and then, on the next leaf, the inevitable 'Study of a Sky.'
On a page of the 'Dort' Sketch-Book is this note of a 'thing seen' that he may have thought of painting:—
'Float of Timber—1000 feet long at least, lashed into two pieces and guided by the cross piece of timber which hauls either part of the float or buoy in two lines—and drawn by 3 Horses down the Canal.'
Plate XIV. Sketch of Cochem on the Moselle. Water colour (about 1831) In the collection of W. G. Rawlinson, Esq. (Size, 9 1/2 x 6 7/8)
During this three weeks' tour in the Rhine district Turner produced no fewer than fifty drawings at the rate of about three a day. He first, says Mr. Rawlinson, stained the paper a uniform bluish-grey, which, although itself sombre in tone, effectively shows up the body-colour work, and must have effected an immense economy of time as compared with ordinary transparent colour. Returning to England he took the roll of drawings straight to Farnley Hall, and Mr. Fawkes bought them for five hundred pounds. For a long time they remained in a portfolio, but a few years ago some of them were sold at Christie's. Mr. Rawlinson possesses one of them, the delicate and romantic 'Goarhausen and Katz Castle.'