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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Study for 'The Landing of Columbus', for Rogers's 'Poems' c.1830-2

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Study for ‘The Landing of Columbus’, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1830–2
D27616
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 99
Pencil and watercolour, approximately 95 x 160 mm on white wove paper, 169 x 241 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘(99’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 99’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a preliminary study for the finished watercolour, The Landing of Columbus, one of seven vignette illustrations which Turner designed for ‘The Voyage of Columbus’, the last work in Rogers’s Poems (see Tate D27708; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 191). Despite the rough nature of this hastily drawn sketch, the composition can be related to that of the finished vignette. Both images show Columbus and his crew approaching the shore to be met by a throng of Native Americans with their chief in their midst on a raised throne. In the background can be seen Columbus’s ship on the left and a group of palm trees on the right. However, in this study the line of disembarking Europeans, including one figure bearing a cross, is located directly in the foreground. In the final design Turner pushed them back to the middle distance and painted the waves lapping against the shore.
The study was once part of a parcel labelled by John Ruskin as ‘Studies for Italy. Coarse, but noble’.1 Finberg records how Ruskin later described his phrasing in a letter to Ralph Nicholson Wornum as ‘horrible’, adding ‘I never meant it to be permanent’.2
Turner produced two additional preparatory studies related to The Landing of Columbus (see Tate D27711, Turner Bequest CCLXXX 194 and Tate D27529; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 12).
1
Finberg 1909, vol.II, p.896.
2
Ibid., vol.I, p.xi.
Technical notes:
Watermark ‘BE & S. 1823’
Verso:
Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘Box 99’ lower right and ‘CCLXXX 99’ and ‘AB 83 P | R’ and ‘No. 71 – 109’ bottom right

Meredith Gamer
August 2006

How to cite

Meredith Gamer, ‘Study for ‘The Landing of Columbus’, 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-the-landing-of-columbus-for-rogerss-poems-r1133383, accessed 19 March 2024.