Joseph Mallord William Turner

Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)

c.1808

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Greenwich Sketchbook
Medium: Ink and graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 76 x 115 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D06809
Turner Bequest CII 45 a

Catalogue entry

Inscribed with the sketchbook inverted. For the longer draft poem to which Turner’s verses belong, see Introduction to the sketchbook. Finberg did not transcribe the verses on this leaf, and the reading given here was made by Rosalind Mallord Turner for the 1990 Tate exhibition:

Restless with care with hope closed her eyes
The Phantom shining calm o[e’]r her pillow
With care and love she heard her l[over’s] cries
As he clings on the rock savd from billows
Kind sleep [repeated in hope closed her eye inserted in pencil]
Her prayer she deep sighed in hope
That kind heaven would drive from her pillow
[The phantom dim sprite as he fled often sighd inserted in pencil]
The one Phantom as ruling [?another’s] sigh
They Lover he is save from the Billow

Another version of the last four lines is on folio 46 (D06810).

David Blayney Brown
March 2007

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