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 Captivity, for Rogers's 'Poems' c.1830-2

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Captivity, for Rogers's 'Poems'’ c.1830-2
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Captivity, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1830–2
D27704
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 187
Pencil, watercolour, gouache, and pen and ink, approximately 135 x 140 mm on white wove paper, 243 x 303 mm
Inscribed in pencil by an unknown hand ‘x’ top centre
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 187’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This vignette, Captivity, was engraved by Edward Goodall and published in the 1834 edition of Rogers’s Poems, as an illustration to a short poem of the same title.1 The vignette appears as a head-piece to the eight-line poem:
Caged in old woods, whose reverend echoes wake
When the hern screams along the distant lake,
Her little heart oft flutters to be free,
Oft sighs to turn the unrelenting key.
In vain! the nurse that rusted relic wears,
Nor moved by gold – nor to be moved by tears;
And terraced walls their black reflection throw
On the green-mantled moat that sleeps below.
(Poems, p.172)
Turner provides a romantic setting for Rogers’s young prisoner who can be seen standing at the window glowing with light. Details that the artist has developed from the text include the ‘green-mantled moat,’ as well as the drawbridge raised to emphasise the subject’s captive status.

Turner produced one preliminary study for Captivity (see Tate D27527; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 10). Unlike many of his preliminary studies for Poems, the sketch shows an entirely different subject from the one that he finally chose to illustrate.
1
Samuel Rogers, Poems, London 1834, p.172; W.G. Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., vol.II, London 1913, no.390. There are no impressions of this engraving in Tate’s collection.
Verso:
Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘NG’ along top and ‘32’ top centre left and ‘24 | b’ centre and ‘CCLXXX 187’ bottom centre. Also in red ink ‘1050’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 187’ lower centre

Meredith Gamer
August 2006

How to cite

Meredith Gamer, ‘Captivity, 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-captivity-for-rogerss-poems-r1133360, accessed 20 April 2024.