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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Marine subjects c.1803-14 > Spithead Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses: 'A Reckoning with Time', after George Colman, and Other Notes (Inscriptions by Turner) 1807

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses: 'A Reckoning with Time', after George Colman, and Other Notes (Inscriptions by Turner)’ 1807
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Recto:
Verses: ‘A Reckoning with Time’, after George Colman, and Other Notes (Inscriptions by Turner) 1807
D41429
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on off-white wove paper, 187 x 118 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The verses complete the poem whose first five stanzas Turner copied inside the front cover (D41428), for which see catalogue entry for a full transcription and comment. Above them, Turner wrote a further note:
D... at 12 o’clock under three Courses – viz | Mainsails ...after making St Helens| blew hard cloudy & sunshine at the | a hard squaly wind W. reaching hard | up. Stay sails set
This must relate to his observations of shipping at Spithead and probably, more specifically, to weather and sailing conditions when Danish ships seized by the British at Copenhagen arrived on 1 November 1807; see Introduction to the sketchbook for the historical background. St Helen’s is on the eastern edge of the Isle of Wight, just north or Foreland.

David Blayney Brown
May 2006

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses: ‘A Reckoning with Time’, after George Colman, and Other Notes (Inscriptions by Turner) 1807 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-verses-a-reckoning-with-time-after-george-colman-and-other-r1139036, accessed 19 April 2024.