Joseph Mallord William Turner

Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry

1811

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook
Medium: Pen and ink and graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 75 x 117 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D08696
Turner Bequest CXXIII 176 a

Catalogue entry

The whole page is taken up with the following lines of verse:

Such that most een follow Nelson
Will [?navy] [?‘defenders’ or ‘defend us’] emulate his fame
Alas no second Blenhim [i.e. ‘Blenheim’] yet is found
No monumnt but yet decks the Ground
[?Activate] in our hearts but still our eyes
Would pleasing view his Cenotaph arise
On some bold promontory where the western main
Rich with his actions ever blesst by fame
Beheld him weather oft in naval pride
Our roaring Channels strong allance [i.e. alliance’] tide
Usfull [i.e. ‘Usefull’] as the Eddystone beams its honor drest
And high the lighted gleam in flamey vest
A Sea mark [?‘emuling’, i.e. ‘emulating’] reverd and ever known
My nation gratitudes monumental stone 1

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 previous passage, on folio 177 verso (D08693; CXXIII 174a), recalled the death of Admiral Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Judy Egerton has described these lines as ‘impassioned’, if ‘unpolished’.2 James Hamilton has noted Turner following the lead of his fellow artist John Opie (1761–1807) as he ‘campaigns for a monument’,3 while Robert Upstone has noted that the verses between folio 177 verso (D08693; CXXIII 174a) and folio 182 verso (D08701; CXXIII 179a) clearly demonstrate ‘Turner’s deep-seated patriotism’4 during the Napoleonic Wars.

Blenheim Palace had been built near Oxford a century earlier as a reward for the Duke of Marlborough’s military victories, and was later the subject of a watercolour by Turner (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery),5 engraved in 1833 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales. Turner goes on to suggest a prominent coastal beacon or lighthouse as a fitting monument to Nelson; he would make two watercolours in the late 1820s featuring the column of Great Yarmouth’s Nelson Monument: Yarmouth Sands (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge);6 and Great Yarmouth, Norfolk (private collection),7 engraved for England and Wales in 1829. There are studies of the Eddystone Lighthouse, in the open sea south of Plymouth, in the Vale of Heathfield sketchbook (Tate D10258, D10260; Turner Bequest CXXXVII 40, 41) and a watercolour of about 1817 (private collection).8

See Wilton and Turner 1990, p.175 (transcription, followed here with slight variations); lines one, six, seven, thirteen and fourteen given in Hamilton 2003, p.102.

Egerton, Wyld and Roy 1995, p.70, quoting lines 6–10 (pp.70–1).

Hamilton 2003, pp.102, 198 note 48.

Upstone 1990, p.54.

Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.399 no.846, Pl.194.

Ibid., pp.405–6 no.904, reproduced.

Ibid., p.394 no.810, reproduced.

Ibid., p.357 no.506.

‘Trafalgar Square – a brief history’, london.gov.uk, accessed 21 January 2011, http://www.london.gov.uk/trafalgarsquare/history/index.jsp.

See Sidney C. Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy 1768–1986, London 1986, p.87.

Matthew Imms
June 2011

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