JMW TURNER
Nephew's Letter and The Rochester Canvas

The Nephew's letter was published by Archer in 'Once A Week' magazine on 1st February 1862. Although it is called the 'nephew's' letter there is no obvious gender attributed to the letterwriter so it could be a neice.

It is a letter dated March 1857 written by a nephew of Margaret Martha Whiteman Douglas, (adopted) daughter of Rev. James Douglas.

The letter names the 'Reverend J. Douglas' but not the daughter. The daughter is named on her baptism certificate which shows that James is not the biological father, as child 3 on a genealogy webpage for the Douglas family and on a marriage register; in both as Margaret Martha Whiteman Douglas.

At the end of the letter it suggests that Margaret bought the canvas. However, JMW Turner would probably have wanted to choose the canvas himself and she was only around twelve years old at the time so it is more likely that she accompanied him.

The nephew writes only of 'the piece of canvas on which the painting is made'. We know from Miller that at least two pictures were made from this canvas. So it is evident that whatever size of canvas was purchased it was cut into smaller pieces. A common width for manufacture of rolls of textiles is 54" and it is common for it to be sold 'by the yard' ('by the metre' now of course!). Artists were familiar with purchasing their paper on sheets which they cut down for use and it would be natural for JMW Turner to have bought a yard of canvas and cut it into four pieces each being sufficient for a finished canvas of around 15" x 20". This is a similar size to his watercolour, 'The Pantheon, The Morning After The Fire', which he had exhibited a few months earlier at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1792; a size that he was evidently comfortable with at that time..