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 123 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811
D08597
Turner Bequest CXXIII 120a
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove printing paper, 75 x 117 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page is taken up with the following lines of verse:
Grey and condensing hovering o’er the swamp
Of deep sunk woods or marshes dull and dank
Crowd like tumulous legions beneath the hill
Like [?congerated] clouds and edding [i.e. ‘eddying’] rill
This way or other as the air incline
Till the all powerfull doth on them shine
Dispersed and shewing on their edge its powers
In varied lights sometimes in force combined
It seems to brave the force of Sun and wind
Blotting the luminary, sheds a doutfull day
Besprinkling oft the traveller on his way1
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).
Wilton and Turner suggest that ‘tumulous’ in the third line be read as ‘tumul[tu]ous’, but ‘tumulous’ (hilly, tumulus-like) makes evocative sense in itself, particularly given Turner’s use of ‘tumuli’ and ‘Tumul’ in earlier passages, on folios 29 recto (D08415) and 103 verso (D08559; CXXIII 100a) respectively. The second word in the following line is given by Thornbury as ‘congregated’, and by Wilton and Turner as ‘concregated’ [sic], but appears to read ‘congerated’. The rare ‘congeriated’, meaning piled up, is perhaps intended, or the similarity may be fortuitous.
The previous passage is on folio 120 verso (D08591; CXXIII 117a), where Dorset and Devon are mentioned, but here and for the next few pages of verse, continuing on folio 125 verso (D08600; CXXIII 122a), Turner meditates on life in the face of the landscape and the elements, without referring to specific places.

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
See Wilton and Turner 1990, p.173 (transcription, followed here with slight variations); previously transcribed with variations in Thornbury 1862, II, p.27 and 1897, p.216.

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-r1137074, accessed 02 August 2025.