J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1811 > Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 61 Recto:
Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811
D08479
Turner Bequest CXXIII 58
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove writing paper, 75 x 117 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘58’ bottom right, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXXIII – 58’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page is taken up with the following lines of verse:
A little hollow excavated round
To a few fishing boats give anchorage ground
Guarded with bristling rocks whose strata rise
like vitrified scoria to southern skies
Called Lulworth cove but no security to those
Who wish from stormy sea a safe repose
Whoever lucklessly are driven
From Portland seeks an eastern haven
Must luff against the south west gale
and strike for Poole alone the tortured sail
For Wight again their safe return denys
The needles brave the force of Southern skies1
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 60 verso opposite (D08478; CXXIII 57a), concerns a nearby shipwreck, and the dangers of the Dorset coast are described in almost technical detail here; James Hamilton sees the later lines showing, among his ‘different characteristics’, Turner ‘the practised sailor’,2 while the opening passage is proof of the ‘keenness of [Turner’s] eye for the structure of the earth and, significantly, his knowledge of technical terms’, stemming from reading, lectures or conversations with geologists – see also folios 143 verso, 152 verso and 204 verso (D08633, D40904, D08731; CXXIII 140a, 149a, 201a).3
For a sketch of Portland, south-west of Lulworth Cove, see folio 44 Recto (D08445). There are verses on Poole, to the north-east, on folios 50 verso (D08458) and 53 verso (D08464; CXXIII 52a). The Isle of Wight and the Needles were sketched from Christchurch on folio 22 recto (D08403; and see the catalogue entry for other views). The next passage, on folio 63 verso (D08483; CXXIII 60a), concerns quarrying in the Dorset area.

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
See Wilton and Turner 1990, p.171 (transcription, followed here with slight variations); lines one to five also given in Hamilton 1998, p.118, and lines seven to twelve in Hamilton 2003, p.100; previously transcribed with variations in Thornbury 1862, II, p.22 and 1897, p.210.
2
Hamilton 2003, p.100.
3
Hamilton 1998, p.118; see also the same author’s ‘Science as Subject Matter’ in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.281.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-draft-of-poetry-r1136956, accessed 07 May 2025.