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 125 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811
D08600
Turner Bequest CXXIII 122a
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:
at others stealing ’neath each down of hill
and scarce diaphinous the vally fill
Then day bring on is courses and sultry car
All nature panting dreads the <[?heating]> [‘ruling’ inserted above] star
Along the narrow road whose deep worn track
Fill up with dust the [?‘usal’, i.e. ‘usual’] burthened pack
Plods heavily and dull with heat opprest
And champs and snorting tells his great distress
Burthend with stone or sand where the steep ascent
Prevent the earth or slide whose quick descent
Make even a load of nothing endless toil
And to the oerloaded path ever [?quick] recoil1
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).
Like the present lines, the previous passage on folio 123 verso (D08597; CXXIII 120a), and the next on folio 130 verso (D08610; CXXIII 127a) meditate on life in the context of the landscape and the elements, without specific topography. There are similarities in the imagery of a pack animal on a difficult journey, here and in the next passage, with ‘the deep worn road’ and ‘groaning wagons pondrous load’ of folio 50 verso (D08458), and the ‘ponderous load’ and ‘shelving road’ of folio 64 recto (D08484; Turner Bequest CXXIII 61).
1
See Wilton and Turner 1990, p.173 (transcription, followed here with slight variations); previously transcribed with variations in Thornbury 1862, II, p.28 and 1897, p.216.
Technical notes:
Other than its initial ‘q’, the penultimate word is almost totally blotted.

Matthew Imms
June 2011

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-r1137077, accessed 16 July 2025.