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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Vignette watercolours c.1826-1843 > Watercolours Related to Samuel Rogers's ... > Artwork

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

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study for 'Greenwich Hospital', for Rogers's 'Poems'’ c.1830-2
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Study for ‘Greenwich Hospital’, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1830–2
D27611
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 94
Pencil and watercolour, approximately 105 x 145 mm on white wove paper, 192 x 243 mm
Inscribed in pencil with short lines on or near the edges of the four sides of sheet
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘(94’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 94’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a study for Greenwich Hospital, a finished vignette illustration for the 1834 edition of Rogers’s Poems (see Tate D27693; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 176). The two compositions are closely related. Both present a frontal view of the north façade of Greenwich Hospital with boats and naval pensioners in the foreground. In the finished version of the illustration Turner moved the large ship to the left side of the image and reduced the number of pensioners from two to one. The retired invalid sailors, many of whom resided at the hospital at Greenwich, would have been familiar figures to a contemporary audience.
The style and medium of this sketch are typical of Turner’s preparatory studies for Rogers’s Poems, which tend to be executed in pencil and light touches or washes of watercolour.
Verso:
Inscribed by an unknown hand in blue pencil ‘218’ centre left

Meredith Gamer
August 2006

How to cite

Meredith Gamer, ‘Study for ‘Greenwich Hospital’, for 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-greenwich-hospital-for-rogerss-poems-r1133341, accessed 26 April 2024.