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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Rokeby and Appleby Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Composition Design, Perhaps Related to Rogers's Poems c.1830-1

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Composition Design, Perhaps Related to Rogers's Poems’ c.1830-1
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 57 Verso:
Composition Design, Perhaps Related to Rogers’s Poems circa 1830–1
D25632
Turner Bequest CCLXIV 57a
Pencil on white wove paper, 74 x 94 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ?‘Bright’ bottom
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page is the second of three in a row in the sketchbook that has been used for a composition study rather than an on-the-spot sketch (see folio 57; Tate D25632). This study bears stylistic and compositional similarity to a study in the Berwick sketchbook (Tate D25695; Turner Bequest CCLXV 30) which Finberg described as a ‘Study for Vignette of Columbus’,1 and Jan Piggott has related to A Tempest – Voyage of Columbus circa 1831–2 (watercolour; Tate D27719; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 202), a vignette design for Rogers’s Poetry.2
With the sketchbook inverted the drawing shows lines of perspective, perhaps made up of visionary figures as in the Columbus design, receding towards a giant swirling sun.
The inscription at the bottom of the page looks like ‘Brant’, though may read ‘Bright.’

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.851, CCLXV 29a–30.
2
Dr Jan Piggott, Turner’s Vignettes, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, p.85.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Composition Design, Perhaps Related to Rogers’s Poems c.1830–1 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2009, 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-composition-design-perhaps-related-to-rogerss-poems-r1133992, accessed 25 April 2024.