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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1811 > Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry; with a Sketch of a Hilly, Wooded Landscape 1811

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry; with a Sketch of a Hilly, Wooded Landscape’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 155 Recto:
Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry; with a Sketch of a Hilly, Wooded Landscape 1811
D08652
Turner Bequest CXXIII 152
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 75 x 117 mm
Part watermark ‘Smy | 17’
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) bottom edge, upside down
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘152’ top left, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXXIII – 152’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The following lines of verse run parallel with the gutter:
Betiding notes of woe more direfull fraught
With Sea mews clangings and the gannet <screams> squeal
The [?slap and billows] clamouring, circling wheel
[?And] endless warfare1
Interspersed with drawings and the printed pages of Coltman’s British Itinerary, sixty-nine pages of this sketchbook are given over wholly or partly to these verses which Turner intended as a commentary for publication with the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England which he sketched on the 1811 West Country tour (see the introduction to the sketchbook). The first lines are on folio 18 verso (D08396), and the last on folio 207 verso (D08736; CXXIII 204a).
The lines conclude the passage occupying the whole of the opposite page, folio 154 verso (D08651; CXXIII 151a), part of a long sequence on the rugged coast an stormy seas of Cornwall. The first letter of the first word in the last line appears to have been altered with a vertical stroke, perhaps to make it ‘In’ as given by Wilton and Turner, although the ‘d’ of ‘And’ remains. The next lines, on folio 157 verso (D08657; CXXIII 154a), consider humanity at the mercy of these natural forces.
Within the lively but slight pencil sketch occupying most of the page it is difficult in places to differentiate foliage from clouds, while several diagonal strokes may indicate sunbeams or rain. The inscription appears to have been written subsequently, partly obscuring the foreground.

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
See Wilton and Turner 1990, p.174 (transcription, followed here with slight variations).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry; with a Sketch of a Hilly, Wooded Landscape 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2011, 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-inscription-by-turner-draft-of-poetry-with-a-sketch-of-a-r1137130, accessed 25 April 2024.