Joseph Mallord William Turner A Wooded Rocky Landscape: ?Study for 'Mercury and Argus' or Thomas Campbell's 'Poems' c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 52 Verso:
A Wooded Rocky Landscape: ?Study for ‘Mercury and Argus’ or Thomas Campbell’s ‘Poems’ c.1834–6
D28865
Turner Bequest CCXCI b 52
Turner Bequest CCXCI b 52
Watercolour on white wove paper, 101 x 77 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.935, CCXCI b 52 (as ‘Do.’, i.e. ditto ‘Landscape, with trees and rocks’, as for folio 51 recto D28863).
1974
Andrew Wilton, in Martin Butlin, Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.126 under no.455.
1977
Andrew Wilton, Turner Watercolors: An Exhibition of Works Loaned by The Trustees of the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, Cleveland Museum of Art 1977, p.72 under no.53.
1993
Jan Piggott, Turner’s Vignettes, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, p.62, as ‘CCCI b; ... f.52v’.
2002
Michael Kitson, in Ian Warrell, Blandine Chavanne and Kitson, Turner et le Lorrain, exhibition catalogue, Musée des beaux-arts, Nancy 2002, p.184 note 48.
2002
Ian Warrell in Christopher Rowell, Warrell and David Blayney Brown, Turner at Petworth, exhibition catalogue, Petworth House, Petworth 2002, p.198 note 38.
2003
Ian Warrell, ‘Exploring the “Dark Side”: Ruskin and the Problem of Turner’s Erotica’, with ‘A Checklist of Erotic Sketches in the Turner Bequest’, British Art Journal, vol.4, no.1, Spring 2003, p.28.
2012
Ian Warrell, Turner’s Secret Sketches, London 2012, p.100.
With the page turned vertically, a loose watercolour landscape comprises trees in the foreground, leading to high rocks on the right and a moonlit sky below to the left. Andrew Wilton first proposed a connection between this and the similar study on folio 51 verso (D28863) and the watercolours Turner prepared in about 1835 to be engraved for Thomas Campbell’s Poems, published in 1837;1 Jan Piggott later suggested that the present page relates to the design for the poem O’Connor’s Child (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh),2 with ‘some figures, the castle and the moon’ in common.3Various slight watercolour studies on separate sheets (Tate D27557, D27559, D27574–D27576; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 40, 42, 57, 58, 59) have also been linked to the subject; of them all, the present page seems more likely to be connected, assuming the resemblance of such elemental forms is not fortuitous.
With acknowledgement to Ian Warrell’s then-forthcoming survey of the erotica in the Turner Bequest, of which there are examples elsewhere in this sketchbook, this page was noted by Michael Kitson4 along with D28863 as a study for the mythological painting Mercury and Argus, exhibited in 1836 (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa).5 Warrell subsequently suggested that the aspects of ‘sight, of voyeurism and surveillance’ associated with the erotic subjects might have informed Turner’s ‘initial realisation of a potential idea’ for the painting, as the story involves such themes.6 As with the proposed link to Campbell, the slightness of the studies here seems to preclude a definitive resolution.
This is one of various watercolour and pencil landscape studies towards the end of this sketchbook, as set out in the Introduction. Of these, the variant pencil studies on folio 56 recto (D28873) might have some connection to the present page.
The unaccessioned, blank recto is inscribed in red ink ‘52’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(b) – 52’.
Matthew Imms
May 2014
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘A Wooded Rocky Landscape: ?Study for ‘Mercury and Argus’ or Thomas Campbell’s ‘Poems’ c.1834–6 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www