Joseph Mallord William Turner

This is a preparatory study for the vignette, Datur Hora Quieti, which appears as the cul-de-lampe or tail-piece to the entire volume of the 1834 edition of Rogers’s Poems (see Tate D27716; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 199). Many of the same details appear in this study as in the finished design, such as the cattle, the figures of farmers in white smocks, and the plough in the foreground. However, unlike many of Turner’s vignette studies, the preliminary and finished compositions are here essentially dissimilar. The study is set against a view of a large cathedral-like structure and includes two figures interacting in the left foreground. By contrast, the published version of the scene is essentially a classical landscape scene. Whilst there is some human activity in the foreground, the main subject of the illustration is the landscape itself.

Verso:

Inscribed by an unknown hand in blue pencil ‘221’ centre