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 7 Recto:
Verses (Inscription by Turner) circa 1808
D06733
Turner Bequest CII 7
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 76 x 115 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘7’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CII 7’ bottom right
 
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). 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:
Say Friendship and accept a thought tho wild
of him who long has struggled to impart
His love of nature and meek natures child
Alex’s’ reed no more this minstrelsy playd
Sweet in the pastoral dignity of Twick[enham] glad[e]
The honord mansion gone [?Rich.] that cheer the Eye
And silver Thames flow dull & Sullen by
The ‘honord mansion gone’ is the Twickenham villa of the poet Alexander Pope – figured here by ‘Alex’ – demolished by its new owner Baroness Howe in 1807; see Introduction to the sketchbook for background and related work.

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-r1130826, accessed 24 April 2024.