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 > Boats, Ice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1807-8

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ c.1807-8
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 86 Recto:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1807–8
D06710
Turner Bequest CI 86
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 180 x 107 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘86’ top right, running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CI 86’ top right, running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
See Introduction and note to folio 85 verso of the sketchbook (D06709) for the background and subject of these verses, the demolition of Alexander Pope’s villa at Twickenham. Rosalind Mallord Turner’s reading published in the 1990 Tate catalogue is adopted here:
The weekly cash perform and wages paid
The weary labourer quits the farming glade
With sorry face [show all inserted] wind[s] o[e]r the stony shore
To poor
Till all his toils the blunted ax[e] had [wore deleted] [bore inserted]
Saw the razed timbers fall from famed Alex[is] roof
‘Alexis’ was the swain whose name was used as the subtitle of Alexander Pope’s early pastoral poem Summer (1709); there he appears as a lovesick youth leading ‘forth his flocks along the silvery Thame’. Here, however, Turner uses it for Pope himself.

David Blayney Brown
December 2006

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1807–8 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2006, 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-inscriptions-by-turner-r1130805, accessed 27 April 2024.