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 and Yorkshire 1814-17 > Devon Rivers, No.2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Lines from Thomas Moore's Translation of Anacreon's Odes ?1814

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Lines from Thomas Moore's Translation of Anacreon's Odes’ ?1814
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Recto:
Inscription by Turner: Lines from Thomas Moore’s Translation of Anacreon’s Odes ?1814
D09775
Turner Bequest CXXXIII 77
Pencil on white wove paper, 178 x 110 mm
Inscribed by Turner with lines of poetry (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘77’ top right, and ‘294’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXXIII 77’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The upper half of the page is taken up with the following lines of verse:
Sabled by the solar beam
Now the fiery clusters beam teem
In osier baskets borne along
By all the festal vintage throng
Of rosy youths and virgins fair
Ripe as the melting fruits they bear
                                         69 Ode of An[...]
Finberg gives this passage much as it appears above, although he read ‘rosy’ as ‘long’, and interpreted the final, truncated word as ‘Horace’1 (the Roman poet of the first century AD). Jan Piggott has followed Finberg’s reading and gives the source as Horace’s ‘Ode ii.v’,2 which does mention sunlight and ripening grapes.3 However, the verse is taken word for word from a translation of the odes of the Greek poet Anacreon (570–488 BC) by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852), first published in 18004 and in several editions over the next few years.5 This passage is from the beginning of ‘Ode LIX’, i.e. 59, rather than 69 as noted by Turner. In the 1830s Turner produced vignette illustrations to be engraved for Moore’s own works; there are a number of studies at Tate (Turner Bequest CCLXXX) and finished designs.6
The imagery of the ‘solar beam’ and the grape harvest would have caught Turner’s eye, accustomed as he was to quoting poetry, sometimes from classical sources, relating to the sun and weather in the catalogue entries for his Royal Academy exhibits. For example, ‘When next the sun his rising light displays | And gilds the world below with purple rays’, from Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, accompanied his painting of Dido and Aeneas, exhibited in 1814 (Tate N00494);7 and he had exhibited The Festival upon the Opening of the Vintage at Macon (Sheffield Galleries & Museums Trust)8 in 1803.
For other verse in this sketchbook, see folios 1 recto, 75 verso and 76 recto (D09668, D09772, D09773).

Matthew Imms
July 2014

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.379.
2
Piggott 2001, p.145.
3
See for example [Thomas] Creech, The Odes, Satyrs and Epistles of Horace. Done into English, 5th ed., London 1730, p.53.
4
Thomas Moore, Odes of Anacreon, Translated into English Verse, with Notes, London 1800.
5
Turner’s transcription matches the eighth edition, London 1810, vol.II, p.79.
6
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.456 nos.1298–1301; see Jan Piggott, Turner’s Vignettes, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, pp.65–7.
7
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.92–3 no.129, pl.135 (colour).
8
Ibid., pp.36–7 no.47, pl.55 (colour)

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Lines from Thomas Moore’s Translation of Anacreon’s Odes ?1814 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-lines-from-thomas-moores-translation-r1147326, accessed 16 July 2025.