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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Thames sketchbooks c.1804-14 > Greenwich Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1808

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ c.1808
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 55 Recto:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1808
D06828
Turner Bequest CII 54
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 115 x 76 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘54’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CII 54’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
See Introduction to the sketchbook and note to folio 48 (D06814) for the discrepancy between the current folio number and Finberg’s. For the longer draft poems to which Turner’s verses belong, see Introduction to the sketchbook. Finberg did not transcribe the verses on this leaf, and the reading given here was made by Rosalind Mallord Turner for the 1990 Tate exhibition:
He caught the truth of Nature & her dyes
Thompson lone tomb seen wet with tears
Since Pope’s remains were lowerd to the ground
that the memory [?softens] worth oer its tears
Let that in thy Eye be found
Season and now show T[wickenham] glade
The Past reed and Eol[ian] harp unstrung
is the harmony that [?friends made]
Sunk in plains of chequered shade
And Thames willows [?gurgled] as the[y] sing
Inspiring Spring her renovating fire
With pleased bind those reeds Alex[is] play’d
With pleasure breathing kiss touch the Lyre
These lines contain further meditations on the tombs of the poets James Thomson and Alexander Pope, the Aeolian harp associated with the former and the latter’s poetic lyre. For variants of this passage, see folios 13 verso and 14 (D06746, D06747).
This leaf also has a slight continuation of the sketch of the Thames at Greenwich on folio 54 verso (D06827).

David Blayney Brown
March 2007

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1808 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2007, 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-verses-inscriptions-by-turner-r1130921, accessed 20 April 2024.