'Study for 'A Garden', Rogers's 'Poems'', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Study for 'A Garden', Rogers's 'Poems'

From Watercolours Related to Samuel Rogers's Poems

Date c.1830-2

MediumGraphite and watercolour on paper

Dimensionssupport: 265 x 354 mm

Collection

Tate

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

Reference

D27534

Turner Bequest CCLXXX 17

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

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Study for ‘A Garden’, Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1830–2

D27534
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 17

Pencil and watercolour, approximately 97 x 105 mm on white wove paper, 258 x 353 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[?Wells’s p[...]’ top left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘(17’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 17’ bottom right

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

References

This is a preliminary study for the vignette illustration The Garden, which was engraved by William Miller and published as the frontispiece for the 1834 edition of Rogers’s Poems (see Tate D27679; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 162). The final composition shows an Italian garden occupied by an elderly man and a young boy. Some elements from the finished design also appear here, including several groups of trees, the outline figure of an old man, and a three columned structure drawn in pencil. As Jan Piggott has observed, this study is clearly linked in palette and style to another preparatory study that Turner produced for Rogers’s Poems, Study for ‘An Old Oak’ (see Tate D27533; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 16).1

Piggott 1993, p.95.

Verso:

Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘AB 117 P| M’ and ‘CCLXIII 17’ bottom right

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.