This vignette,
St Julienne’s Chapel, was engraved by Edward Goodall and published in the 1834 edition of Rogers’s
Poems.
1 The illustration appears as the head-piece to Part III of a poem entitled ‘Jacqueline’, in which the eponymous French heroine is married to her true love, D’Arcy. Turner marked the start of the following lines with pencil in the margin of his own copy of the 1827 edition of
Poems (see Tate
D36330; Turner Bequest CCCLXVI p.176):
That morn (’twas in Ste. Julienne’s cell,
As at Ste. Julienne’s sacred well
Their dreams of love began)
That morn, ere many a star was set,
Their hands had on the altar met
Before the holy man.
(Poems, pp.151–2)
His illustration depicts two moments in the narrative. On the left-hand side in the middle distance the lovers are married by the cowled figure of the ‘holy man’, whilst on the right-hand side in the foreground the couple reappears by a fountain, presumably the ‘sacred well’ of St Julienne where they first met. The composition is unusual amongst Turner’s vignettes for its vertical format, as well as for its primarily human and architectural subject matter. The jewel-like palette and delicate light effects enhance the romantic tone of Rogers’s fairy tale.
