J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Thames sketchbooks c.1804-14 > Greenwich Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses (Inscription by Turner) c.1808

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscription by Turner)’ c.1808
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Verso:
Verses (Inscription by Turner) circa 1808
D06732
Turner Bequest CII 6a
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 115 x 76 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
For the longer draft poems to which Turner’s verses belong, see Introduction to the sketchbook and note to folio 1 verso (D06722) where there is a different version of the lines written here. Finberg did not transcribe the verses on this leaf and the reading given here was first made by Rosalind Mallord Turner for the 1990 Tate exhibition:
For th[ee] he braves the rugged northern skies
Explored the Greenland icey bay
To open to golden shore another [shorter inserted] way
For the North West Pass. in vain was tried
[The daring Willoughby for the unshaken inserted]
For thee the daring Willoughby died
With stiffning sails the congelating [plies inserted] tide
But Willoughby in frozen regions died
As on 1 verso, Turner writes of the explorer Hugh Willoughby and his death trapped in ice on the coast near Murmansk while trying to find a North-East Passage for the Company of Merchant Adventurers in 1553. He also alludes to the ‘North-West Passage’, a holy grail of adventurers for two centuries who hoped to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north of the American continent; it had been the object of Captain Cook’s third voyage in 1776. It is mentioned again in verses on folio 8 verso (D06736).
Also written on this leaf, below Turner’s verse, are two lines of Latin, not quite legible.

David Blayney Brown
March 2007

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscription by Turner) c.1808 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2007, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-verses-inscription-by-turner-r1130825, accessed 26 April 2024.