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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Hastings Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1809-11

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ circa 1809-11
Folio 94 Recto:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1809–11
D07744
Turner Bequest CXI 94
Pencil and pen and ink on white wove paper, 110 x 88 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil and ink (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘94’ top right, running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXI 94’ top right, running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s inscription is mainly in pencil but with three words of the first line overwritten in ink. Rosalind Mallord Turner’s reading of Turner’s inscription for the 1990 Tate exhibition is largely followed here:
Thou devils when all in the feverish night
When the livid dog star rages denying rest
To the weak Eyelids that the noon tide beam
Has glared to nothingness thou blood
Throbbing through all in meandering more swift
Quick urges thoughts on thought [Columbus like deleted]
Columbus like wishing for day to crown
His long sought controul that went the last ray
Seen crowning on lengthened gleams of Rayleigh
Or Bruce our rapturous gaze enchanted saw
In the minds eye alone the splendid Nile
Gushing in wide widening torrents drooping to the coast
Attended by the flowers of the world unknown
Thus by enchanting prospects passing on
Bruce’s deeds the cold cold eye of sense
And sends all headlong in the wild turmoil
This passage continues the poem on fancy and imagination begun on folio 95 of the sketchbook (D07745). As examples of those led afar or astray by fancy Turner cites explorers and voyagers; Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Ralegh and James Bruce. Andrew Wilton associates ‘Bruce’ with Robert the Bruce1 but Turner means the eighteenth-century explorer of the Nile. Bruce’s Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (1790) was probably known to Turner since its account of the quest for the river as a ‘distempered fancy’ and of the author’s disturbed and wakeful nights on his journey2 seems to be echoed in the artist’s verse; see also folio 93 verso–recto (D07743–D07742) where he continues to reflect on Bruce. Here, his lines on ‘splendid Nile’ echo James Thomson’s ‘rich king of floods’ in ‘Summer’ (1727; from The Seasons).
Turner ends his poem on folio 92 verso (D07741) with a picture of Ralegh’s last years in prison.
1
Wilton and Mallord Turner 1990, p.93.
2
James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, vol.III, Edinburgh 1790 pp.640–1.
Verso:
Blank

David Blayney Brown
May 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1809–11’, catalogue entry, May 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/verses-inscriptions-by-turner-r1131231, accessed 14 May 2025.