Artist Unknown

A pair of Tortoiseshell Temple Spectacles



English, second quarter of the nineteenth century



The tortoiseshell frame with a slight bridge and round glass lenses, with metal arms and extendable temple sides terminating in looped ends



 



A Snuff Box



Scottish, nineteenth century



Burr-maple, the lid with a integral hinge revealing a tortoiseshell interior, with a broken handle



length: 11 cm., 4 1/4in., width: 5cm., 2in.



 



A folding Magnifying glass



English, nineteenth century



Horn handled, oval



length: 6.5 cm., 2 1/2 in., width: 5.5 cm., 2 1/4 in.



 



A Card Case



English, nineteenth century



leather bound



length: 9.5 cm., 3 1/4 in., width: 4.5 cm., 1 3/4 in.



 



with a postcard from Mrs Parkes to Mr Carpenter, April 4th 1906 and a note written by Mr Carpenter explaining the provenance of the objects

Mrs Maria Tanner;

by descent to her children, Mr Tanner and his sister, Mrs Parkes, 29 Hercules Road Lambeth;

purchased by John and Emma Carpenter (b.1856), nee Towle, of Plymouth;

a gift to her brother, Samuel and Emma Towle, nee Trevor;

by descent to Grace Emma Bradley, nee Towle (d.1977);

by descent to Gwendoline Helen Trevor Bradley (b.1909);

by descent to her godson, cousing and executor, the present owner

Tate Britain, 1979-2003

Turner’s spectacles, snuff box, magnifying glass and card case all come from the collection of Maria Tanner who helped clean his studio on Queen Anne Street in Chelsea.  She was ‘an old crony’ of Turner’s housekeeper, Hannah Danby, (see Jack Lindsay, J.M.W.Turner – his Life and Work, 1966, p.216) and the two women lived together in Turner's house after his death. In his will, Turner appointed Hannah Danby as ‘Custodian and Keeper of the Pictures House and Premises 47 Queen Anne Street’ and left her £150 to keep the Gallery ‘in a viewable state at all times.’ In turn, Hannah Danby mentioned Maria Tanner in her own will and stated 'I give and bequeath unto Maria Tanner now living with me in Queen Anne Street aforesaid the sum of sixty pounds free of legacy duty' (Hannah Danby, 7th December, 1853).  From Mrs Tanner, these items came into the possession of her son and daughter, Mrs Parkes, who lived at 29 Hercules Road, Lambeth. Tanner and his sister sold them to a Mr John Carpenter and through his wife, Emma (nee Towle), they came a further three generations to the present owner. From 1978 until recently they have been on loan to Tate Britain.

The spectacles, which were made by Benz and bought from the London opticians, Stanley Pearce, date from the second quarter of the nineteenth century and are one of only two pairs belonging to Turner which are known to exist. The other pair, saved by John Ruskin, is in the collection of the Ashmolean and at present on loan to the Tate Gallery. The prescription of the two spectacles differ; the present pair measure –2.50 for both the left and right lenses whereas the Ashmolean pair measure + 3 and + 4. In the opinion of James McGill, consultant ophthalmic surgeon, however, Turner’s eyesight was a –3 and he used the present glasses for long distance vision and the Ashmolean pair in later life for reading, painting and other close work.

The right lense of the present glasses also measures a stigmatism of –0.25 X 43. Although there is no medical evidence Patrick Trevor-Roper argues that Turner may have had a stigmatism and sites Liebreich’s 1872 paper to the Royal Institution where it is suggested that ‘the distortion which accompanied the blurring, along with the overall reddening (in Turner’s watercolours), were due to a secondary astigmatism that…a sclerosis of the lense may induce’ (see Patrick Trevor-Roper, The World Through Blunted Sight, 1988, p.92).

Whilst on view at Tate Britain in the Clore Gallery these items were described as ‘associated with J.M.W.Turner’ and whilst it is clearly impossible to prove beyond doubt that a pair of spectacles, a snuff box, a magnifying glass and a card case were once Turner’s own, the ownership of these items by a lady who was a friend of Hannah Danby’s and helped with the cleaning of his gallery, and the fact that they were subsequently handed down to her children and then sold by them – objects which would not have warranted such treatment if they did not belong to a significant figure – shows that in the nineteenth century they were accepted as his, and subsequent examination of them supports this provenance.

We are grateful to Anthony Bailey, Selby Whittingham and James McGill for their assistance in cataloguing this lot