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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Study for 'A Garden', Rogers's 'Poems' c.1830-2

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
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
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

How to cite

Meredith Gamer, ‘Study for ‘A Garden’, Rogers’s ‘Poems’ c.1830–2 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 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-study-for-a-garden-rogerss-poems-r1133336, accessed 19 March 2024.