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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Farnley Hall and Yorkshire c.1808-24 > Woodcock Shooting Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Three Lines of a Poem About the Vale of Tempe (Inscription by Turner) c.1812-13

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Lines of a Poem About the Vale of Tempe (Inscription by Turner)’ c.1812-13
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 122 Verso:
Three Lines of a Poem About the Vale of Tempe (Inscription by Turner) c.1812–13
D09205
Turner Bequest CXXIX 122a
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 178 x 110 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHA[TMAN | 180[5]’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s lines are written across the centre of the page, as follows:
“They would have thought, who heard the strain,
They saw in Tempe’s vale her native maids
To some unwearied minstrel dancing
The Vale of Tempe is in north-eastern Greece, not far from Mount Olympus. Its rugged scenery is the setting in Ovid’s Metamorphoses for the attempted seduction of Daphne by Apollo, and her subsequent transformation into the laurel. In antiquity it was the site of a famous temple to Apollo where laurel was gathered for the victors at the Pythian games. It became the poetic type of any pleasant valley and, given the connection of this sketchbook with Farnley Hall, perhaps Turner was thinking about the Washburn Valley or Wharfedale.

David Hill
October 2008

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Three Lines of a Poem About the Vale of Tempe (Inscription by Turner) c.1812–13 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2008, 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-three-lines-of-a-poem-about-the-vale-of-tempe-inscription-by-r1146928, accessed 14 May 2025.