'Columbus Setting Sail, for Rogers's 'Poems'', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Columbus Setting Sail, for Rogers's 'Poems'

From Rogers's Poems 1835 Watercolours

Date c.1830-2

MediumGraphite, watercolour and pen and ink on paper

Dimensionssupport: 238 x 309 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D27706

Turner Bequest CCLXXX 189

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Columbus Setting Sail, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1830–2

D27706
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 189

Pencil, watercolour, and pen and ink, approximately 102 x 155 mm on white wove paper, 240 x 310 mm
Inscribed by ?the engraver in pencil ‘x | Head-piece –’ top centre
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 189’ bottom right

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Exhibition history

References

This is one of seven illustrations that Turner produced for ‘The Voyage of Columbus’, a miniature epic poem which is the final work in the published volume of Rogers’s Poems (for a brief description of the poem, see Tate D27705; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 188). The seven vignettes in order of their appearance in Rogers’s text are: Tate D27705, D27706, D27714, D27707, D27708, D27719, D27709; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 188, 189, 197, 190, 191, 202, 192.

This illustration, Columbus Setting Sail appears as the head-piece to Canto I of ‘The Voyage of Columbus’.1 Like all of the ‘Columbus’ series, it was engraved by Edward Goodall.2 Although the scene does not illustrate a specific passage in Rogers’s text, it aptly complements the opening lines, which celebrate the hero and his courageous, legendary voyage:

Say who, when age on age had rolled away,
And still, as sunk the golden Orb of day,
The seaman watched him, while he lingered here,
With many a wish to follow, many a fear,
...
Who the great secret of the Deep possessed,
And, issuing through the portals of the West,
Fearless, resolved, with every sail unfurled,
Planted his standard in the Unknown World?
...
Him could not I exalt – by Heaven designed
To lift the veil that covered half mankind!
(Poems, pp.227–8)

Turner’s vignette shows Columbus and his three ships setting sail from Palos, in the Gulf of Cadiz. The quay is filled with countless figures, waving as the ships pull away. The viewer’s attention is caught in particular by the foreground group of a mother and two sons, watching the departing vessels, presumably carrying the father on board. Rogers does not describe the scene in his poem and Jan Piggott has suggested that Turner probably based the composition upon an engraving of Palos that appeared in Washington Irving’s Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus (1831), although he embellished and enlivened the scene significantly.3 The billowing sails of the three ships, the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, which are especially visible in the engraving, suggest an auspicious start for the long voyage to come.

Piggott has also noted the preponderance of cruciform shapes in this vignette (visible in the masts and spars of the ships, and the anchor in the foreground), which is a common theme throughout the ‘Columbus’ series.4

Turner produced two preliminary studies of this subject (see Tate D27535; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 18 and D27536; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 19). There are also several small thumbnail sketches of sailing ships in the margins of Turner’s working copy of the 1827 edition of Poems (see Tate D36330; Turner Bequest CCCLXVI pp.232, 245, 314).

Samuel Rogers, Poems, London 1834, p.227.

W.G. Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., vol.II, London 1913, no.399. There are two impressions in Tate’s collection (T05125 and T06171).

Piggott 1993, p.42.

Ibid.

Verso:

Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘2’ top centre and ‘25 | a’ centre right and ‘CCLXXX.189’ bottom centre, and in red ink ‘1026’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 189’ lower centre

Meredith Gamer
August 2006

Read this catalogue entry in full

This catalogue entry is part of: David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012.