This vignette,
Valombrè, was engraved by Edward Goodall and published in the 1834 edition of Rogers’s
Poems.
1 It is the first of three illustrations that Turner designed for a poem entitled ‘Jacqueline’ about a young French girl whose choice of lover causes a rift with her father. At the beginning of the poem, the eponymous heroine runs away from her home in the French countryside and, as a result, no longer goes to visit the falls in Valombrè:
Not now, to while an hour away,
Gone to the falls in Vallombrè,
Where ’tis night at noon of day;
Nor wandering up and down the wood,
To all but her a solitude,
Where once a wild deer, wild no more,
Her chaplet on his antlers wore,
And at her bidding stood.
(Poems, pp.143–4)
Turner highlighted the entire passage with pencil in the margin of his own copy of the 1827 edition of
Poems (see Tate
D36330; Turner Bequest CCCLXVI p.168) and his subsequent vignette closely reflects the details of Rogers’s verse. The watercolour is remarkable among Turner’s illustrations to the series for its brilliant palette and delicate light effects.
It has been suggested that the small red deer in the foreground may be the work of the celebrated animal painter Edwin Landseer (1802–1873), but there is no firm evidence to support this conclusion.
2 It is known, however, that Landseer did paint animals into other compositions by Turner, such as
The Hospice of the Great St. Bernard, II circa 1826 (Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie),
3 and
Mortlake Terrace exhibited 1827 (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
4The other two illustrations for ‘Jacqueline’ are
St Pierre’s Cottage (see Tate
D27700; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 183) and
St Julienne’s Chapel (see Tate
D27703; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 186).
